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Madonna/Whore

Theatre 118, Glasgow Three stars   Serial killers have been a mainstay of true crime TV for decades. Julie Calderwood’s new play puts the makers of such programmes in the dock as much as their subjects in a work that looks at men in power and the abuses they wield on the women who get in their way.    Calderwood sets her play in a maximum-security prison, where man of the people TV host Hugo Cameron prepares for his exclusive interview with Thomas Cullen. Cullen is incarcerated for the murders of five women, but the interview is his last chance to convince the world of his innocence, with his on camera plea aimed especially at his daughter.    Before all that, researcher Grace has had to navigate her way between the two evils that confront her. On the one hand, putting up with Hugo’s old school obnoxiousness seems to be part of the job description. On the other, Thomas’ initial charm points to a different side of a man with nothing to lose.    On camer...

Linder – Danger Came Smiling

Ten seconds into Linder’s new performance creation, and a baby starts crying. It’s Saturday afternoon in Mount Stuart House, the gothic country pile on the Isle of Bute, and the storm outside has already provided a dramatic backdrop to  A kind of glamour about me  and  its accompanying exhibition, which sees Linder drawing from Victorian photographs of a family dressing up for some kind of Alice in Wonderland cosplay.    The title comes from Walter Scott, who wrote how ‘There is a kind of glamour about me, which sometimes makes me read dates, etc, in the proof-sheets, not as they actually do stand, but as they ought to stand.’ Such notions chime with Linder’s own mystical fantasias.   For a moment at the start of the performance, one wonders whether the infant wail is being conjured up by composer Maxwell Sterling on his electric cello at the side of the stage. Either way, it seems to fit with the maelstrom that follows as a quartet of extravagantly cl...

Ken Currie – Union Organiser (1987) and The Calton Activist (1987)

By the time Ken Currie graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1983 his work was steeped in politically driven socialist realism. The acquisition of two of Currie’s works from that time - Union Organiser (1987) and The Calton Activist (1987) – highlight the significance of such early pieces.     Currie is probably best known today for paintings such as Three Oncologists (2002), a study of three doctors at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee. More recently, Currie’s fascination with mortality and the body saw him paint Unknown Man (2019), a portrait of forensic anthropologist Dame Sue Black. Many of Currie’s works are set against dark backgrounds full of foreboding that suggests his figures are spotlit as if for a film.   Currie’s early career saw him became part of a generation of artists – Steven Campbell, Stephen Conroy, Peter Howson and Adrian Wiszniewski were others – brought together in 1985 for the New Image Glasgow exhibition at the Third Eye Centre, now the site of the C...

The Great Gatsby

Pitlochry Festival Theatre Four stars   Happy endings don’t come easy in Elizabeth Newman’s new adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s twentieth century jazz age American classic. Produced for the 100th anniversary of the novel’s publication in this co-production between Pitlochry Festival Theatre and Derby Theatre, Fitzgerald’s ennui laden yarn of vaulting ambition lays bare how money may talk, but it also corrupts.    As with the book, the story is told by Nick Carraway, here a wannabe writer observing the scene he accidentally falls into with an eye for myth making where everything and everyone becomes material. And what a gift Jay Gatsby is, a self-made nouveau riche socialite with a murky background who only wants to impress his former lover Daisy. She may have sold her soul to marriage with nasty Tom, but is tempted back into Gatsby’s social whirl with devastating results.    Sarah Brigham’s production sets out its store on Jen McGinley’s neon tinged set of s...

Fools on a Hill

Theatre 118, Glasgow Four stars   Everyone has their crosses to bear in Chris Patrick’s new play, in which a couple of believers meet in the sort of outdoor venue where decidedly unchristian things might happen in order to curry favour with the big guy upstairs. Our hapless pair aim to do this by way of hammer, nails, some handy DIY and a lot of faith to muffle the screams. When an angel finally does turn up to show them the way, rather than some beatific saviour bathed in a holy glow, this winged wonder is a grumpy naysayer who keeps his halo in his briefcase and is in permanent dispute with his boss.    The Lord moves in mysterious ways in Colin McGowan’s rapid-fire production that sees Patrick’s stream of one liners go beyond what initially looks like an extended routine into a scabrous comic look at the painful extremes of blind faith. Erin Scanlan’s naive disciple makes a kooky comic foil to Ross Flynn’s self appointed right hand man of God, played by Flynn as a...

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Botanic Gardens, Glasgow Four stars   Don’t be fooled by the sound of thunder that opens this seasonal outdoor take on Shakespeare’s sauciest rom-com, already seen in several different guises over the last twenty-four years of Bard in the Botanics’ summer takeover of Glasgow’s leafiest gardens. The sound effect is likely just an in-joke on how many times rain has stopped play over the years.    This weekend, however, the gods - and more importantly, the sun - shone on Gordon Barr’s Celtic tinged affair that both sartorially and spiritually seemed to look to the early 1970s free festival scene. This was a time when assorted hippies, freaks and seekers after enlightenment jumped aboard the New Age caravan to get their collective heads together in the country.    Much of this styling is down to Carys Hobbs’ extravagant set and costume design, a magnificent multi coloured patchwork of faux regal exotica. The sound travelling from the two outdoor concerts in Gla...

Doctor Faustus

Botanic Gardens, Glasgow  Four stars    The clock is ticking for the good doctor of Christopher Marlowe’s tragedy of self-destruction, brought to life for this year’s Bard in the Botanics season, tellingly titled Magic – mayhem – and murder.  Jennifer Dick’s three-actor version was first performed in the Kibble Palace back in 2016. Her revisitation is as much a trip into the perils of fantasy wish fulfilment as it was before in an even tauter eighty minutes that sees Faustus throw himself into a tug of love between the two extremes that seem to offer him a lifeline.    Having reached the pinnacle of his profession only to lose his mojo, Faustus’s desires go way beyond the appliance of science. As if by magic, Mephistopheles appears to make him an offer he can’t refuse. Only the Good Angel hanging on his shoulder is standing in his way.   As in Dick’s original production, Faustus is embodied by a returning Adam Donaldson as a frustrated academic wh...

The Croft

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh Three stars   Ghosts and a whole lot more are in the house in Ali Milles’ overloaded thriller, resurrected by the Original Theatre company following a truncated run in 2020 cut short by lockdown.    It begins simply enough, as the spirited Laura arrives at her family home in the hills with her older lover Suzanne in tow. Before the pair can settle in, unreconstructed family ghillie David arrives to check out the cottage hasn’t been occupied by interlopers. Other former residents soon make their presence felt, however, as what started out as a retreat for Laura and Suzanne becomes an almighty confrontation.    As time slips back and forth between Liza Goddard’s Enid all the way up to Laura’s own mother, history repeats itself by way of several generations of dangerous liaisons and secret affairs that make up a century spanning soap opera. Throw in some free thinking talk of witches and selkies and as the rocking chair springs into unoc...

Man’s Best Friend

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Five stars   It’s a dog’s life for Ronnie, the man at the centre of Douglas Maxwell’s beautifully realised new play, brought to life in a heart wrenching solo turn by Jordan Young. In charge of five of his neighbours’ pet hounds, Ronnie’s entire life is kept on a pretty short leash as he attempts to navigate the assorted excitable personalities of his furry brood. Yet, for all he never quite bonds with his charges, and however hazardous their daily walks might be, their presence fills a vacuum in Ronnie’s own life that since the Covid induced lockdown has left him bereft. When a particularly chaotic morning finds one of the dogs raking up something unexpected in the woods, it is a necessary shock to the system.    There is huge heart at play in Maxwell’s writing, which looks at the fallout of everyday tragedy against a much larger backdrop to bring it emotionally alive in an immaculately structured work full of big ideas about humanity, loss and surv...

The Inquisitor

Oran Mor, Glasgow Four stars   “You are us,” says the Inquisitor of Peter Arnott’s play to his silent Prisoner at one point. This is a telling moment in this unspecified war of attrition that reveals the similarities as much as the differences between those in one conflict or another. Whether political, religious or generational, as the Inquisitor expounds on morality, ethics and all the contradictions at play that give us the excuse to square any circle we like in the name of whatever cause is going, for a veteran like him, this time it seems, it’s also personal.    Tom McGovern’s Inquisitor is every inch the establishment mandarin in Liz Carruthers’ suitably elliptical production, the final lunchtime offering from A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s spring and summer season. Sat in the old school splendour of designer Heather Grace Currie’s set, McGovern waxes forth from his desk while his Prisoner, initially bound, but always captive, acts as a human sounding board, never givin...

The Secret Goldfish – Empty Holster (Creeping Bent/Last Night from Glasgow)

As the Creeping Bent Organisation winds down operations after thirty years on the frontline of art/pop interface, it is only fitting that one of its swan song releases gets back to its roots. As one of the label’s mainstays from the start, The Secret Goldfish do this on their fourth opus through a collection of cover versions guest-starring a posse of fellow travellers. As a work in progress on the go since 1996, the result is a delirious pop mash-up of influence and homage that joins several generations of assorted rock family tree type dots while still sounding every inch The Secret Goldfish.   Much of this is down to vocalist Katy Lironi, who takes songs by Vic Godard, ex Orange Juice guitarist James Kirk and Fire Engine turned Sexual Object Davy Henderson and makes them her own. There is something Proustian too hearing Lironi sing the Shop Assistants’ mournful Somewhere in China, Godard’s Stop That Girl and Henderson’s Nectarine No 9 era 22 Blue with a cast list that includes G...

Grease

Pitlochry Festival Theatre Four stars   Teenage dreams have rarely sounded sweeter than in Sam Hardie’s loving revival of Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey’s original piece of rock and roll revivalism. Jacobs and Casey’s quifftastic confection may have been sweetened for Randal Kleiser’s smash hit movie that saw John Travolta and Olivia Newton John keep both the punk and disco hordes at bay from the number 1 pop chart slot in the summer of ‘78, but happy days are here again in a show that takes its moves more from the original stage show.    As good girl Sandy spars with tough guy Danny after a holiday romance that sees them join forces with their respective gangs once school starts. What follows sees them make a song and dance of an everyday tale of first love, peer group pressure, youth cult tribes, the growing pains of friendship and learning to be who you want to be that points to teen drama past, present and future. The mass earworm familiarity of Jacobs and...

The Haunting of Agnes Gilfrey

Oran Mor, Glasgow Four stars    A storm is brewing over Mull in Amy Conway’s new comedy thriller that forms the latest offering from A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s current season of lunchtime theatre. Agnes and her American TV actor husband James have arrived late at the old house where they are having a belated honeymoon. Greeted unexpectedly by housekeeper Mrs Carlin, Agnes and James are also seeking to escape other domestic pressures. Once things start going bump in the night, however, old ghosts making their presence felt sees things spiral into a nightmare. Only when Agnes confronts a few demons does the storm calm.    Shades of Inside Number 9’s meticulously observed pastiches of hammy horror pulp fiction TV tropes abound in Katie Slater’s production of Conway’s script. This is the case from the creepy portrait of the former lady of the house Constance Laird resembling real life characters, to Manasa Tagica’s Jack appearing to believe he is in a reality show. ...

Story: Selected Works from Edinburgh Printmakers’ Collection; Impressions: Selected Works from Jerwood Collection

As the necessary historicisation of Scotland’s pre digital but all too recent artistic past runs on apace, it is vital that collections are put on show to remind year zero types that the world didn’t begin with NFTs and AI, but with hard graft and artistic vision.     So it goes with Story, which fills Edinburgh Printmakers’ downstairs gallery with what is effectively a greatest hits selection that joins the dots between Edinburgh Printmakers’ assorted homes since it was founded in 1967 in Victoria Street as The Printmakers’ Workshop. Seen together, the forty works on show also become something of a rough guide to the high rollers of contemporary Scottish art since then.   Drawn from Edinburgh Printmakers’ permanent collection, the exhibition begins with the muscularity of work by John Bellany, Jock McFadyen, Ken Currie and Peter Howson, as well as pieces from Sam Ainsley and Carol Rhodes. This moves onwards to several generations of art stars, with contributions from the...

Meet the Gods – Jeremy Deller and Laura McSorley on The Triumph of Art in Dundee

Saturday lunchtime in Dundee’s City Square, and the Gods walk amongst us. The red carpet is out on the steps of the Caird Hall leading inside to the Marryat Hall, and the Square is alive with noise. As Dundee Community Youth Orchestra rehearse a horn-led number that sounds like an off-cut from the soundtrack to cult 1970s film The Wicker Man, a stall run by KennardPhillipps, the artist duo of Peter Kennard and Cat Phillipps, is being set up for people to screen-print their own t-shirts.    Another stall invites passers by to toss celestial looking laurels on to hooks to win a mystery teapot. A group of students are dressed in homemade outfits that look like a miniature Stonehenge. Co-curator of the day’s events Laura McSorley walks across the Square wielding what appears to be a gold  lamé  bullhorn.   At the far end of the Square, the drums and chants of pro and counter refugee based demos may not be part of the official spectacle at the Caird Hall end, bu...

Faisal Saleh - Palestine Museum Scotland

Palestine Museum Scotland is hard to miss in its new home in the heart of Edinburgh’s commercial gallery district. The two artworks that fill the Museum’s windows looking out on to Dundas Street are a striking introduction to this holistic initiative set up by Palestinian American Faisal Saleh as the first such venture in Europe.   Inside, the gallery floor is dominated by a map of Palestine in 1948 that features the names of 500 villages destroyed by Israel that year during the Nakba, in which more than 800,000 Palestinians were driven from their homeland. These names have been reinstated into the landscape by historian Dr. Salman Abu Sitta, who, aged ten, was himself forced from his home during the Nakba to seek refuge elsewhere.   The map is flanked on one side by a painting by veteran Palestinian artist, Samia Halaby, which shows idyllic looking fields spread out across the canvas. “It’s a typical Palestinian landscape before it was cut up,” Saleh explains. “It’s the sort ...