Coffee-Table Notes

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,...