Coffee-Table Notes

Theatre 118, Glasgow Four stars   Meet Alex, the twenty something woman whose entire life is on hold in Larissa Ryan’s solo play. Scratching a living answering calls for a company selling the sort of ideal homes she could never afford, the 3pm till midnight shift suits her ongoing avoidance of the entire human race. Her only interactions come from the after hours freaks and weirdos on the other end of the line who really don’t want whatever it is she’s selling. Alex knows this because they tell her so in graphic terms.    Alex doesn’t hold back either in Ryan’s performance, as she confesses all her troubles while craving some kind of way out. Her sounding board for this comes in the form of a bunny rabbit glove puppet recommended by her therapist. The tough love Alex is harangued with by the bunny recalls the co-dependent sparring dished out in ancient TV routines between ventriloquist Shari Lewis and her similarly sarcastic appendage, Lamb Chop. It is the voices in Alex’...

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh  Five stars    The birds are circling in this new take on one of the greatest children’s stories ever told, but nicely. As the flock of green and yellow plumaged puppets swoop, soar and provide comfort several times over to little orphan Ella, they offer a form of liberation as well to their already free-spirited charge, even as she is under the thumb of her gleefully wicked stepmother and her pair of brattish enfants terrible stepsiblings.   This makes for a delightfully colourful Cinderella in Sally Cookson and Adam Peck’s version of the story, written with their original production’s company when it was first seen in Bristol back in 2011. Jemima Levick’s new look at it for the Lyceum’s Christmas show picks up the baton and invests it with a heart, soul and visual wonder that brings it to joyful life. At the heart of this is a fusion of handsomely realised sound and vision bolstered by a set of deliciously grotesque performances...