Coffee-Table Notes

Tramway, Glasgow Four stars   Sex and the disabled has long been considered by some as a taboo topic, with presumptions that those with disabilities don’t have sexual feelings, let alone act on them, still prevailing in some quarters. Such ideas should have been put to bed after the screening of The Skin Horse, an impressionistic 1983 Channel Four documentary on the subject that was co-scripted by the late Nabil Shaban, who also appeared in it prior to becoming a familiar presence on Scotland’s stages later in his career.    More than four decades on, the subject is still hot property, as this new play from disabled based theatre company Birds of Paradise demonstrates in a work co-written by Hana Pascal Keegan, Gabriella Sloss, and BOP artistic director Robert Softley Gale.   The play’s main focus is Ben, a nineteen-year-old wheelchair user who has barely left his parents house for six months following an incident in a Liverpool nightclub. With his only real human co...

It was George Costigan’s idea that he and Matthew Kelly should do Waiting for Godot together as Vladimir and Estragon, the two men waiting for the title character who never comes in Samuel Beckett’s play that revolutionised twentieth century drama. Watching these two very different veterans of stage and screen spark off each other as they riff on Beckett’s piece of existential vaudeville in which ‘nothing happens twice’, you can see why it was such an inspired notion.   “This is a play about love,” says Kelly of Godot, in which the everyday chemistry between life long friends is laid bare in all its mundane glory. “For two people like us, who’ve known each other for fifty eight years – and I think Vladimir and Estragon have known each other for that long - it’s kind of an ideal time for us to do it. And we might get it right this time.”   Dominic Hill’s new production that opens at Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre prior to dates in Liverpool and Bolton will be the fourth time Kelly ...

Theatre Royal, Glasgow Three stars    For almost three decades now, composer Jim Parker’s foreboding theremin waltz has been an oddly comforting prime time telly fanfare that has opened the door to millions of viewers on what may or may not be regarded as rural middle England’s answer to Twin Peaks. So it goes as well for Guy Unsworth’s stage version of Caroline Graham’s very first Inspector Barnaby novel that gets behind the hedgerows and into the deceptively sleepy killing fields of the fictional county of Midsomer.   As long term fans and subscribers to ITVx will already know, this involves the quietly determined Inspector Tom Barnaby and his wet behind the ears Sergeant Gavin Troy dispatched to the even sleepier hamlet of Badger’s Drift to investigate the death of an 80-something local called Emily Simpson.    In a village peopled by a roll-call of dotty eccentric spinsters, Freudian mummy’s boys, wannabe artists, posh girl gold diggers and illicit trysts th...

Citizens Theatre, Glasgow Four stars   When George Bernard Shaw dragged himself out of premature retirement in 1923, the great man’s late burst was inspired by Joan of Arc being made a saint. A decade on, Shaw was persuaded to write a screenplay based on his drama. As other filmmakers have shown, the story of the French teenager who made France great again after hearing holy voices in her head only to be burnt at the stake for her trouble was ripe big screen material. Shaw’s slimmed down version of his play, alas, remains unmade.    It is his screenplay, however, that is the source  of director/designer Stewart Laing’s remarkable rendering that sees Martin O’Connor’s malevolent Chorus speak the scenic directions as the action unfolds. At points his narration makes him sound like a frontline war correspondent in a way that recalls the historical reconstructions of Peter Watkins’s great documentary styled film, Culloden, by way of the voiceover disruptions of radical L...

The Studio, Edinburgh Four stars   Meet Joey. He’s just turned up at church for his best mate’s mum’s funeral looking and smelling like he’s spent the night in Sodom, and has a eulogy to give. Before all that, however, Joey has a story to tell, not just about what happened last night, but how a gay Catholic teenager like him growing up in Galway managed to navigate his way to who he is. And why not? As the great big cross at the centre of the stage makes clear, he’s in the right place to confess all.    Conor O'Dwyer performs his debut solo play with an unfettered brio in Jen McGregor’s production, which comes home following an Edinburgh Festival Fringe run and several years of development care of Capital Theatres and others. In what is clearly a labour of love for O’Dwyer, the play sees Joey bluff his way through school and embrace a few stereotypes en route to enlightenment beyond being a self styled ‘bad gay’.   While O’Dwyer’s writing makes clear there are still ...

When Queen Victoria granted what was about to become the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts its Royal Charter in 1896, the then thirty-five year old organisation was at the centre of Glasgow’s contemporary art scene. At various times, the likes of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and assorted Glasgow Boys and Scottish Colourists were all fully paid up members of an organisation that at one point hosted the biggest open exhibitions outside London.   130 years on, and after a few years off radar, the RGI is back with its largest exhibition in a decade. This comes with a bold new impetus to reclaim the organisation’s place at the heart of the Glasgow scene. This is most evident in RGI: Celebrating 130 Years of Royal Status, a major new group show at the Lillie Art Gallery in Milngavie.   This follows a series of small RGI exhibitions that have taken place since December 2024 at the John D Kelly Gallery, whose city centre presence on Douglas Street has literally provided a shop win...

The last week has seen the sudden closure of one of Scotland’s most important arts venues. No, not the CCA, which had been an accident waiting to happen for years. Nor are we talking about Cumbernauld Theatre, which was eventually rescued after a rethink on funding previously denied them. Neither is it any of Edinburgh’s assorted festivals, nor the country’s national arts companies who have been on standstill funding since forever. This is about Theatre 118, a volunteer led DIY theatre company formed by a loose-knit collective of Glasgow based writers, directors, actors and other theatre makers less than a year ago. Set up with the aim of presenting new work at affordable prices, Theatre 118 also provided cheap rehearsal space for independent practitioners who might not be able to afford to hire anywhere else.   Up until last week, the company was based on one floor of Granite House, an empty office block at 118 Osborne Street in Glasgow city centre. Since moving in last ...

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh Three stars   Christmas has either come early, late or is now an all year round thing judging by the title of the suitably named Mischief Theatre Company’s latest excursion into on and off stage chaos care of their perennially O.T.T. Cornley Amateur Drama Society. As it is, for fans of the, ahem, C.A.D.S. since their inception a decade and a half ago with the cunningly titled The Play that Goes Wrong, such out of season anomalies will be as predictably familiar as much as the show is a chance to catch up with old friends.   Cue Daniel Lewis’s dictatorial director Chris, Henry Lewis’s old ham Robert, Greg Tannahill’s nervous wreck Jonathan, Ashley Tucker’s stars in her eyes Sandra and the rest of a company with only a passing knowledge of Charles Dickens’ classic festive yarn, and even then only by way of the Muppets. With Chris casting himself as Scrooge, what follows beyond the Christmas jumpers, Jonathan’s fear of heights, young Dennis’ inabi...

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars   Two men stand peering at a large white screen made of paper. It is as if they are looking out on to some idyll-like landscape or a futuristic city that remains invisible to anyone without vision enough to build it. A printer at the side of the stage spews out sheets of paper with words on it that act as silent dialogue. Once the men move the screen to one side, a group of small tree trunk sized logs and some wooden pallets are revealed. For the next half hour, each man takes an axe to a log apiece and chops and chops and chopsuntil they splinter and break.   This audacious and compelling spectacle of hard graft sees the performers build up a percussive momentum that at times recalls the pounding rhythms of 1980s industrial music relocated to a forest. What happens over the next hour beyond their mini display of physical strength, however, is a remarkable study in renewal, recycling and transformation through a mix of imagination an...

Summerhall, Edinburgh Three stars   Auntie Empire has something to say. As  writer/performer Julia Taudevin’s creation holds court over a soundtrack of couthy Scottish classics, the audience enter to become both her subjects and a very, very, very extended family. The address that follows sees Auntie prepare to give her last will and testament as she slowly falls apart along with the last fetid gasps of British imperialism.   Taudevin’s new solo show premiered as part of the Manipulate festival this weekend after assorted showcases over the last few years. Clad in prosthetically enhanced twin set and joke shop teeth, Taudevin’s Auntie is the sort of toff so posh you can only understand one in ten words they say. A veneer of respectable authority manifests itself in cups of tea and Tunnock’s teacakes handed out to the audience, some of whom are forced on stage to do her bidding. Gradually, however, Auntie’s hectoring gives way to a bowel busting collapse of power.   U...

Lyra, Edinburgh Three stars   The studio of the former school transformed by the Lyra organisation into Scotland’s first dedicated theatre for children and young people resembles a playroom prior to Bruno Gallagher’s new show for this year’s Manipulate festival of visual theatre and animation. Young audience members try on masks and costumes that sit on hangars waiting to transform the wearers, who pose for dramatic selfies. Other props sit on tables waiting to be perused. Wild images of surreal characters line the walls, while all the while a package tour soundtrack compiled from sunnier climes plays with joyful abandon.   If this interactive pre-show spectacle allows a glimpse into what goes on in Gallagher’s head, it also acts as a trailer for what happens upstairs in the theatre by way of a quartet of what their creator calls ‘Absurdities’. These are bite-size vignettes inspired by Gallagher’s wanderings in Europe played out by an array of creatures that have effectively b...

Citizens Theatre, Glasgow Three stars    After more than fifteen years creating once in a lifetime musicals out of thin air and audience suggestions, the Olivier award winning, BBC Radio 4 friendly comic troupe The Showstoppers will know to always expect the unexpected. Even so, when on tour, they should always brush up on the local landmarks, lest someone throws out some serious googlies.    Such was the hilarious case on Friday during the first of the Showstoppers two-night run at the Citz, when co-director and mine host for the evening Adam Meggido was taken somewhat by surprise on several counts. Firstly, while asking for suggestions of a location for his company’s still unwritten opus, the suggestion of Haven Caravan Parks threw him. As the purveyors of static caravan summer breaks are a UK wide operation, his reaction probably says much beyond geography. More pertinently, perhaps, when the Barras was suggested, it was clear that  Glasgow's world famous mar...

Scotland’s theatres are well and truly open to all manner of shows in February. Here are some that shouldn’t be missed.     When Billy Met Alasdair Theatre Royal, Dumfries, 7 February; Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling, 13 February; Eastgate Theatre, Peebles, 21 February; Adam Smith Theatre, Kirkcaldy, 27 February; Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, 28 February; Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, 28 March. Alan Bissett’s speculative conversation between Billy Connolly and Alasdair Gray  at the launch of Gray’s novel, Lanark, in 1981 at Glasgow’s original arts lab, the Third Eye Centre was a hit on the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Bissett brings two artistic greats to life with the sort of imagination used in his novels alongside a fearless performative flair. Bissett fans might also want to head over to the Memorial Theatre, Arbroath on February 20th for the last ever performance of Moira in Lockdown, the third and final part of The Moira Mon...

Citizens Theatre, Glasgow Four stars   Birth, sex and death are pretty much the driving forces in one form or another behind most human drama as we know it. They are the heart of the matter too in the life cycle of a puppet as laid bare in absurdist maverick Mamoru Iriguchi’s latest creation, which previewed in the Citz Studio over the weekend prior to a forthcoming short run at Edinburgh’s Manipulate festival of visual theatre.    Here, Iriguchi and fellow performer Julia Darrouy are Tangerine and Sunshine, a pair of life size puppets playing versions of each other. Introduced by a much smaller narrator puppet that then proceeds to keel over, Tangerine and Sunshine are then taken under the wing of the narrator’s now fully proportioned ghost, who takes them on a trip in which they get to explore all puppets great and small by way of different size versions of themselves.    As opposites attract and one size most definitely does not fit all in certain situations,...