Coffee-Table Notes

Marianne Faithfull – Singer, Actress.   Born December 29, 1946; died January 30 2025   Marianne Faithfull, who has died aged 78, was a mercurial singer, who transcended her status as a 1960s swinging London icon and weathered several personal storms to become an elder stateswoman of a very English kind of bohemianism. She became a pop face after scoring a hit with a jaunty rendition of As Tears Go By (1964), composed by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, who would later put out their own version of the song.    Faithfull released five albums between 1965 and 1967, living a high profile lifestyle exacerbated in part by her relationship with Jagger. As the peace and love hedonism of the 1960s gave way to something darker at the end of the decade, Faithfull dropped out of view. Following several years of homelessness and heroin addiction, she returned to music with a vengeance with Broken English (1979).    With Faithfull’s by now far huskie...

Theatre Royal, Glasgow Four stars   Life is a series of bad dreams for Rachel Watson, the woman at the heart of this chic looking adaptation of Paula Hawkins’s smash hit 2015 novel, stopping off in Glasgow this week as part of its latest tour.    The mess Rachel has seemingly created for herself is a rush hour of arrivals and departures, in which her drinking blacks out everything she thinks she knows. Her husband Tom has long left her for his new bride Anna and their firstborn, and the only thing she has going for her is the daily commute to London.    Now Rachel has been sacked from her job, the journey allows her to spy on Tom and Anna’s neighbours, about whom she concocts her own imagined story to fill the void. As reality bites, the truth of what is really going on beyond the train carriage window with the couple who are actually named Scott and Megan is considerably stranger than any fiction Rachel can concoct.    As Rachel navigates her way betw...

Usher Hall, Edinburgh Four stars   “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” By rights, the then Johnny Rotten’s almost final words as a Sex Pistol at the end of a shambolic 1978 San Francisco show should have marked the death knell of punk. Now here we are almost half a century on, and the snot-nosed anti establishment rebellion is packing in those who keep the faith at the fanciest concert hall in town. The nostalgic night out that follows is as showbiz as any other rock and roll revival, and none the worse for it.   A three-piece house band set the tone as they plough through an authentic sounding Anarchy in the UK. The rapid-fire assault of now classic pop-punk hits that follow is introduced by a leather-jacketed Kevin Kennedy, aka Coronation Street’s Curly Watts. Kennedy’s musical roots in Manchester include a stint in teenage band Paris Valentinos with future Smiths Johnny Marr and Andy Rourke. This makes for a perfect CV to be the night’s MC and Narrator.   ...

King’s Theatre, Glasgow Four stars   Size matters in this big-time stage version of John Waters’ 1988 film that marked the one time prince of sleaze’s crossover from cult status to commercial acceptance. It’s not just the larger than life physical presence of would-be teen queen Tracy Turnblad, whose desire to appear on Corny Collins’ TV dance show, become Miss Teen Hairspray 1962 and get a grip of pretty boy rocker Link Larkin opens her up to a whole new world beyond her Baltimore front door.    It is the way writers Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan and composers Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman load up Waters’ original construction with a perfectly judged confection of homage and pastiche whilst retaining Waters’ taboo busting subversive heart writ large. Soul too is in the mix of this irresistibly effervescent production, that sets out its store at a time when the only time black and white mixed was on a monochrome TV screen, but which here makes for one of the most colo...

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh  Five stars   When Mary Poppins flies across the auditorium of the Festival Theatre at the culmination of this magnificent touring revival of co-directors Richard Eyre and choreographer Matthew Bourne’s now twenty-year-old production, it is both thrilling and terrifying to watch. Especially in light of Storm  Éowyn , which on Friday night caused the cancellation of the official opening night of this Cameron Mackintosh and the Disney Organisation produced epic’s first visit to Edinburgh in over eight years.   Actress Stefanie Jones as Mary may have her brolly up as she soars above the audience, but you can’t help worry about how she would have fared if exposed to the hoolie outside. Mercifully, all was calm by the Saturday matinee, and other than a first act technical hitch, Mary Poppins was very much in charge once more.    This is how it should be in Julian Fellowes’ adaptation of P.L. Travers’ 1934 novel and its assorted sequel...

A large sycamore tree stands directly within the sight lines of the dining room windows of Colstoun House, the 900-year-old pink hued mansion house on the outskirts of Haddington in East Lothian, fifteen miles from Edinburgh. As a focal point of the immediate landscape surrounding the oldest family home in Scotland and still the domain of the Broun clan, the tree has proved an inspiration for the artists who have passed through the residency programme started up in 2022 by Colstoun Arts. This is the initiative set up by Mackie Sinclair-Parry, the former business strategy consultant and art collector nephew of the current laird.   “They all paint that tree,” Sinclair-Parry says, pointing through the window following a tour of Colstoun’s art collection. “It doesn't matter who it is. That's the starting point. I might as well dig that tree up and take it to London. It's funny how we’ve got hundreds and hundreds and thousands and thousands of trees in Colstoun, but they all pic...

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Five stars   Money talks in the New York based Theatre For A New Audience company’s searingly contemporary take on Shakespeare’s trickiest play, visiting Edinburgh as part of the company’s Shakespeare Exchange initiative with the Lyceum. The sharp suited world of high class hustlers where director Arin Arbus sets out her store may stick to the script in terms of its original location, but as the play’s stakes are ramped up in a commercially driven world, it feels a lot closer to the city the company call home.   As city slicker Antonio cuts a fateful deal with Jewish loan shark Shylock to bankroll his best bro Bassanio’s big deal on the high seas, the hatred is mutual. Business is business, however, and as long as the cash is on the table and debts are paid, no one gets hurt. Meanwhile, wealthy heiress Portia eases the boredom of being loaded by putting her love on the market as she auditions a role-call of international idiots before Bassa...

King’s Theatre, Glasgow Four stars   Dolly Parton is a musical and philanthropic wonder. For anyone with ears and something between them, this is a rootin’ tootin’ no-brainer. Whatever the considerable talents of the First Lady of country music and much more besides, no-one would expect her to have been a saviour of Covid induced lockdown. Then again, the pandemic did strange things to those with over-active imaginations and no one to isolate with but themselves.    Such is the premise behind this musical fantasia dreamt up by writer Bruce Vilanch, director Gabriel Barre and the show’s star Tricia Paoluccio. Rather than step out with a full on jukebox tribute to Parton, Vilanch, Barre and Paolucci put the spotlight on a guy called Kevin, a forty-something man-child and wannabe comedian who lives in his mother’s attic. This has been transformed into a shrine to Ms Parton by way of Paul Wills’ wonderfully cluttered set.   With only a record player and a bulk buy of toi...

The Playhouse, Edinburgh Four stars   It is more than fifty years now since a kinky corset fashioned for a Glasgow Citizens Theatre production of Jean Genet’s The Maids was taken to London by Tim Curry to help launch a bona fide counter-cultural crossover classic. Half a century on, Richard O’Brien’s glamtastic piece of cult fiction remains the theatrical monster that refuses to lie down and die. This latest tour of director Christopher Luscombe’s long running revival of O’Brien’s gender bending opus stays true both to the show’s sub Warholian  trash aesthetic and its fringe theatre roots, even as it has become a vehicle for real life stars.   Cue Jason Donovan, who dons stockings, suspenders and what probably isn’t costume designer Sue Blane’s original corset as Frank-N-Furter, the cross dressing mad scientist who tempts lost innocents Brad and Janet into his spooky lair that all the freaks call home. Donovan makes his entrance following the hip hugging ensemble rou...

Joanna Tope – Actress Born May 14 th  1944; died December 19 th  2024    Joanna Tope, who has died aged 80, was an actress who combined glamour, sophistication and intelligence over a more than fifty-year career that saw her light up stage and screen. This came in two separate acts, with a ten-year gap between. The first saw her appear on stage alongside the likes of John Gielgud in Edward Bond’s play, Bingo (1973), play Adelaide in Guys and Dolls, and take the title role in Hedda Gabler.   On TV she had a regular role as Dr. Clare Scott in twenty-two episodes of what was then Emmerdale Farm (1973), and appeared in guest roles in Z Cars (1974) and children’s science fiction drama, The Tomorrow People (1975). Prior to her sabbatical, Tope also appeared in four episodes of Jack Gerson’s supernatural thriller, The Omega Factor (1979).   When Tope returned to acting in 1994, it was as Jocasta in a new version of Oedipus Rex at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, whe...

When Benno Schotz (1891-1984) visited his brother in Glasgow in 1912, the Estonian sculptor never really left. The then twenty-one year-old returned to his homeland once before settling in Scotland for good. The result of Schotz’s self imposed exile was an artistic and personal journey that saw him become one of twentieth century Scotland’s greatest sculptors.   As a member of the Royal Scottish Academy and Head of Sculpture and Ceramics at Glasgow School of Art, Schotz would also be an inspirational teacher and champion of other artists. At the heart of his work was a network of family and friends, with his wife Milly, daughter Cherna and son Amiel influencing his figurative work prior to him taking a more abstract path inspired by trees in Kelvingrove Park.   Schotz’s migration to Scotland is the drive behind Benno Schotz and A Scots Miscellany, the current exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy that puts some of Schotz’s key works alongside twelve other first generation m...

The Playhouse, Edinburgh Four stars   America is hell in the late Jim Steinman’s rock and roll love story, reimagined in 2017 from his multi million selling albums for Meat Loaf as a long overdue jukebox musical. Steinman sets out his store in what used to be Manhattan but is now a dystopian dump, with youthful dissent beaten into the underground tunnels that line the city. Brought to life by director Jay Scheib, Steinman’s epic draws from Peter Pan, Romeo and Juliet and the sort of 1980s teen flicks where the good guys wear black leather jackets to make a suitably bombastic morality tale writ very large indeed.   It opens with Love and Death and An American Guitar from Steinman’s own 1981 album, Bad for Good. As delivered by Katie Tonkinson’s goth rebel Raven, Steinman’s spoken word monologue about attempted patricide by guitar is possessed by a low-key menace worthy of a routine by New York’s original No Wave bad girl, Lydia Lunch.    Raven is at war with her wealt...