Coffee-Table Notes

Dundee Rep Four stars   Faith and belief are at the heart of John Patrick Shanley’s 2004 play, seen here for the first time in Scotland since 2010. Set in a Catholic school in the Bronx district of New York in 1964, Shanley’s play pointedly frames itself a year after the assassination of President John F Kennedy. This is highlighted in an opening sermon by the progressive Father Flynn, who questions putting what is sometimes blind faith in old certainties.    This is a red rag for Sister Aloysius, who rules the school with a tight-lipped authoritarianism that won’t allow room for any new ways of thinking, whatever Vatican 2 might say. This leads her to embark on a campaign against Father Flynn with the intent of ousting him from office. To do this, she manipulates her young charge Sister James into reluctant complicity with her damning claims regarding Father Flynn’s alleged conduct before what is effectively a trial by hearsay ensues.   This makes for an intense nin...

Perth Theatre Four stars   Life’s a joke for Will and Ronnie at the start of this brand new stage version of Ninian Dunnett, Michael Hoffman and Andy Paterson’s 1985 big screen curio, which rode the wave of post Gregory’s Girl Scottish whimsy with an Edinburgh world view that was a gift to tourist board types.    While neglected at the time of the film’s release, forty years on, the whimsy is still intact, but there is a whole lot more going on besides, as the trio reposition their film as a feelgood musical with a higher purpose. Heroes don’t wear capes here, but, as with the film, sport clown and wolfman masks instead, as Will and Ronnie make the move from not so merry pranksters to dandy highwaymen.    On the run from their back street roots to hold up the highland tourist buses, the pair become international legends en route. As Will finds romance in the arms of tourist guide Margot, Ronnie falls in with a bad crowd of comedy gangsters who seem to have stepp...

Oran Mor, Glasgow Four stars    “A young man in his underpants is not a good look in the Catholic Church.” So goes one of Mammy Superior’s brand spanking new set of commandments down at St. Boaby’s on the Knob. The gift shop isn’t exactly doing a roaring trade under the watchful eye of this holier than thou demagogue and her frisky underling Sister Mary Mary. With the Cambuslang Cat Burglar on the prowl, the Old Relic of St. Boaby’s seemingly easy pickings, and Mammy Superior’s sights set on the Vatican, it’s only a matter of time until someone is crucified for their sins.    The Lord moves in mysterious ways in James Peake’s riotous new comedy for Oran Mor’s A Play, a Pie and a Pint season of lunchtime theatre. No sooner is a scurrilous nun-based post Easter farce programmed before real life events in Rome intervene, with the script requiring a couple of respectful tweaks lest assorted plagues fall down on the former church venue.    If such incidents reca...

Lochgelly Centre Three stars     When twenty-year-old Mary Shelley published Frankenstein in 1818, little did she realise the enduring scale of the monster she had just spawned. More than two hundred years on from what is regarded as the first science fiction novel, writer Julia Taudevin has drawn inspiration from Shelley’s story and dragged it firmly into the twenty-first century.    Taudevin’s title character is a machine age product of TechBro, the near future’s all consuming conglomerate on a mission to mass produce an army of robots programmed for your every need. Frankie, alas, has been set up to be more human than the real thing. This causes her to be rejected by the Bro-powers that be and left in a limbo with a group of fellow prototypes who similarly don’t compute.    This causes the emotionally charged humanoid to embark on a quest to meet her maker, who comes, not in the form of company man and possibly mad scientist Frank, but the more independe...

Paddy Higson – Film producer   Born June 2nd1941; died April 13th 2025     Paddy Higson, who has died aged 83, was a trailblazing film producer who was long regarded as the mother of the Scottish film industry. Over more than forty years she worked closely with several generations of directors, writers and fellow producers in Scotland. She helped foster a series of films that set the tone for a way of contemporary Scottish filmmaking that was witty, urbane and quietly aspirational.   Higson worked with director Bill Forsyth as associate producer on his debut feature, That Sinking Feeling (1979), was production supervisor on Gregory’s Girl (1980) and associate producer on Comfort and Joy (1984). She also worked as line producer on director Michael Hoffman and Ninian Dunnett’s Edinburgh set comedy, Restless Natives (1985).   While she played a crucial role in nurturing all those films, Higson’s first credit as a producer in her own right was Living Apart Together ...

Oran Mor, Glasgow Four stars   Life is a curse for the street-smart queen with the messy domestic life in Nikki Kalkman’s reimagining of Greek mythology. Instead of simply bumping off her heroine after her incestuous affair with her more dramatised son, Kalkman has Jocasta arrive with a flourish as she attempts to gain an access all areas pass into the Underworld. Amidst designer Gillian Argo’s celestial looking array of curtains, Jocasta is forced to tell her story to the unseen godlike gatekeepers, purging her own demons as she goes.    As Jocasta offloads all, from one night stands with muscle-bound himbos to becoming an abused trophy bride at the hands of king Laius, where ‘the fingerprint of every day was bruises and boredom’, it is clear Jocasta has been damaged enough to warrant some kind of intervention. As she gets herself the ultimate toy boy to die for, alas, the sex may be great, but as the local gossips aren’t shy of pointing out, it’s complicated. ...

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh  Four stars    Don’t mess with Calamity Jane. If you do, you’re likely to be shot down in a dramatic standoff you’ll never win. This is as true of any attempt at reworking Charles K. Freeman’s 1961 stage version of David Butler’s 1953 James O’Hanlon scripted movie as it is of the gal herself. As unreconstructed as this rootin’, tootin’ yarn concerning tomboyish Jane’s getting of wisdom remains, Freeman’s play is as faithful to its big screen roots as the assorted brides at the end of the play are to their various beloveds who look like they finally struck gold.   All this is driven by composer Sammy Fain and lyricist Paul Francis Webster’s wagonload of showtunes that have become sing-along classics. This is evident from the opening moments of this touring revival of Nikolai Foster’s 2014 production, first seen at the Watermill Theatre, Newbury. As a grizzled old cowboy plucks out a few notes on a banjo, it immediately prompts the audi...

The ghosts of musics past can easily send seekers down online rabbit holes in search of enlightenment. For many, this often begins with The Fall. Oh! Brother is the tellingly named show hosted by siblings Paul and Steve Hanley, who both served lengthy stints in the ultimate outsider group and lived to tell the tale.   Since 2021, Oh! Brother has seen the Hanleys engage an array of former band members, celebrity fans and other fellow travellers for discursive chats about life in and out of Mark E Smith’s ever changing ensemble. Highlights include chats with the band’s former keyboardist Marcia Schofield, ex footballer Pat Nevin, Ian Rankin and John Niven. If at times it sounds like a bunch of old blokes in a pub gathered like a post punk reincarnation of Last of the Summer Wine, that’s because sometimes it is.   Working in similar territory is Electronically Yours with Martyn Ware, with former Human League and current Heaven 17 stalwart Ware opening up his even more extensive a...

Òran Mor, Glasgow Three stars   Birthday girl Scarlet is in for a big surprise when she goes home to mum Sarah for her twenty-first. The very special present waiting for her in Jennifer Adam’s new play for Òran Mor’s current A Play, a Pie and a Pint lunchtime theatre season turns out to be something pretty titanic. To say it wasn’t what Scarlet was expecting is something of an understatement, especially as an environmental activist with big plans of her own with her girlfriend and fellow agitator Judyth. To carry out those plans, however, Scarlet needs to get her hands on her inheritance left to her by her dad, who passed away fifteen years earlier. A somewhat large obstacle, alas, is preventing Scarlet from getting her hands on it. In an increasingly hothouse environment, things go into meltdown at every level.    Adam’s play merges the personal and the political just as it fuses everyday absurdism with social realist observation. This looks to the metaphorical ridiculou...

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Four stars Dead poets don’t always get second lives once they are lost to history. Once rediscovered and reclaimed, however, poetic license is up for grabs in a way where myth-making is often more interesting than the boring old truth.     So it goes with James Macpherson, the eighteenth century Scottish writer who caused a literary sensation with his apparent rediscovery of ancient Gaelic bard, Ossian. Trouble was, it was quickly debunked as fake news, with the artistic gatekeepers of the day led by Samuel Johnson dismissing Macpherson’s apparent exclusive as a hoax of the highest order.    This is the starting point for Martin O’Connor’s own dramatic poem that quickly goes way beyond Macpherson and Ossian’s place in Scotland’s cultural canon to a more personal reflection on what it means to be Scottish. In a landscape as kitsch as the tartan tat shop Emma Bailey’s set resembles, O’Connor explores his own family roots on the Isle of Lewis and t...

4 stars   Bad dreams burst through the walls in Portia Zvavahera’s exhibition of paintings, which sees the Zimbabwean artist dig deep into both her psyche and the spiritual forces that drive her. The result in Zvavahera’s first exhibition in Europe is an epic series of works driven by an unholy alliance of fear and love channelled from Zvavahera’s fevered imagination. The rats may be poised to pounce, but through the swirl of colours where they hide, her only mission is to keep her children safe from harm.   This moves from the early devotions of ‘His Presence’ (2013), ‘Labour Ward’ (2012) and ‘Labour Pains’ (2012) in the Fruitmarket’s downstairs gallery, to the more recent night terrors of works made in the last year shown upstairs. This accidentally symbolic ascension charts a journey that is both holy and possessed. With titles like ‘Fighting Energies’ (2024’), ‘Hide There’ (2024) and ‘Lifted Away’ (2024), it is no accident that the title of the exhibition is the Shona word...

The Studio, Edinburgh Three stars   Something is stirring in the depths of Loch Ness, and there’s a lot more making waves than the new hydroelectric plant that’s just opened in Shonagh Murray’s new family friendly musical. This is something would be junior marine biologist Mara finds out for herself when she discovers an entire community of little and not so little creatures hiding just below the surface where they deal with all the junk thrown into the water.    As well as a dam-building otter called Oggie and a friendly heron named Heather, there is a timorous beastie called Nessa, a one of a kind creation that evolution seems to have forgotten about as she finds shelter in increasingly stormy waters. While Mara’s mother Emma, an engineer at the plant, is forced to defend its workings in the face of nimbyish opposition, Mara’s school project sees her bullied by a boy named Ally. The tourist myth of the Loch Ness Monster, meanwhile, runs ever wilder in an alrea...

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars   To be young, female and with writerly intentions probably wasn’t easy in American Civil War era nineteenth century Massachusetts. This is partly why Louisa May Alcott’s much adapted semi autobiographical novel was so ahead of its time. Initially published in two parts in 1868 and 1869, Alcott’s rites of passage saga concerning four very different sisters as war rages elsewhere tapped into a radical need for women’s emancipation, literary or otherwise.    A love for Alcott’s story concerning the growing pains of Jo, Meg, Amy and Beth March is palpable at the start of Anne-Marie Casey’s adaptation, directed here by Loveday Ingram. As the girls huddle around Jo’s writing desk at the corner of Ruari Murchison’s tree lined set, this is Jo writing her way into her life. Surrounded by a mix of the natural and domestic worlds and bathed in the corn coloured glow of Mike Robertson’s lighting, it is through the subsequent loves and losses th...

King’s Theatre, Glasgow Five stars   The sirens that usher in this latest revival of Stephen Daldry’s epoch making reimagining of J.B. Priestley’s drawing room skewering of the monied classes speaks volumes about what follows. Written at the end of the Second World War and set two years before the First, Priestley’s play took the whodunnit formula and gave it a social conscience that Daldry’s production explodes into view.   At the heart of this is Inspector Goole, who gatecrashes the fancy dinner held by factory owning industrialist Arthur Birling to celebrate his daughter Sheila’s forthcoming nuptials with the equally well-heeled Gerald Croft. Birling’s feckless dipso son Eric is also in attendance, with queen bee Sybil set to make her entrance.    Goole arrives with news of the death of a young woman called Eva Smith. This may have been by her own hand, but as her assorted circumstances are laid bare, the Birlings appear to be complicit in her demise en masse. It ...