Coffee-Table Notes

Dundee Rep Five stars   Like a Busby Berkeley of the Barras, Tony Roper knows how to make a memorable routine. This is why his comic masterpiece set in a 1950s Glasgow washhouse on Hogmanay where four working class women banter the night away has survived almost forty years and umpteen productions since it first appeared in 1987. Since then, it has become a bona fide contemporary classic, with bums on seats guaranteed wherever it plays.    So it goes in this big new touring production led by cast member Louise McCarthy and Ryan Alexander Dewar’s Rerr Terr company in association with Neil Laidlaw Productions, Selladoor and Dundee Rep. With Roper back in the director’s chair, it isn’t hard to see why his celebration of women, community and the collective power of both retains its rapport with audiences, many of whom are likely to be as familiar with the play as the brilliant cast are here.    One mention of Galloway’s mince by old Mrs Culfeathers is enough to sign...

By the time Elizabeth Blackadder (1931-2021) became the first woman to be elected to the Royal Scottish Academy in 1972, the Falkirk born painter and printmaker had already carved out a unique oeuvre of vibrant landscapes and still lives focused on flowers and  objects. Some of this was channelled into the tapestries and rugs contained in Elizabeth Blackadder: A Life in Colour, a new exhibition of Blackadder works that puts the textiles in dialogue with paintings and drawings drawn from the RSA collection. Marking five years since Blackadder’s death, the exhibition at Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh, where the textile works were made, aims to show off Blackadder’s vivid use of colour in her visual language. Blackadder’s relationship with Dovecot dates back to 1966, when Still Life, Tulips (1966) was her first tapestry work. Since then, Dovecot has collaborated with Blackadder on a total of thirty-one tapestries and five rugs. These include Eastern Still Life (1980)...

Royal Lyceum Theatre Four stars    The drums beat loud in this mighty rendering of a 14th century epic Middle Eastern narrative poem. Passed down the centuries in various guises, it is reimagined here from a Syrian version by Palestinian writer/director Bashar Murkus and dramaturg Khulood Basel of their Haifa based Khashabi Theatre. With the seven performers already on stage and welcoming audiences as they arrive, the result over the next life affirming three hours is a gorgeous mash-up of storytelling, dance and a wonderful live score led by drummer Rami Nakhleh and singers Rana Baransi and Abed Zoabi.    The story they tell in Arabic with English surtitles - The Epic of Bani Hilal  or السّيرة الهلاليّ - is an awfully big adventure that takes in battles of love, war and an eternal quest for new lands to call home. Out of this comes a contrary beauty that comes from a joyful and playful delivery by the cast as they act out each chapter o...

King’s Theatre Four stars    Roll up! Roll up! America may not be the greatest show on earth in Geoff Sobelle’s tragicomic depiction of a big top in free fall, but oh, what a night. The acrobats have somersaulted off into the distance, the ringmaster has gone west, and with only the clowns left behind and left to their own devices, the lunatics appear to have take over the asylum, But at least they have an audience, so of course they’ll provide the entertainment, albeit in all its shambolic, falling apart glory.    There’s nothing subtle in Sobelle’s latest work, an Edinburgh International Festival commission following the American physical auteur’s previous visits in 2018 with HOME and 2023 with FOOD. What there is in Clown Show’s 100-minute construction is a meticulously madcap series of ensemble routines that take familiar gags only to upend them beyond the regular pratfalls to self destruct on a grand scale.  Lined up in search of approval from the lifesize ...

Church Hill Theatre Four stars    The title of Greek auteur Mario Banushi’s devastating meditation on death, family and the baggage left behind comes from the Albanian restaurant his father ran, and which translates as Restaurant of Kindness. Kindness isn’t the first thing that comes to mind in the 70 minutes that follow, as Banushi lays bare the agony of a family’s grief in a series of set-pieces that become increasingly ritualistic.   On designer Sotiris Melan os’ tiled wall set, Banushi steps out of the shower having cleansed his sins for a funeral. Once suited and booted, he sits beside a row of grieving women. This is heightened by the remarkable singing voice of Savina Yannatou, whose improvised lament is a wracked howl that at points sounds drawn from the same guttural well as Greek/American virtuoso, Diamanda Galas.   A jacket torn from the earth where the body is buried hangs on the back of a chair. One of the women who has just attempted to f...

Theatre Royal, Glasgow  Four stars    Darkness becomes Gina Gionfriddo’s new stage version of Thomas’ Harris’ 1988 novel. The second in the author’s Hannibal Lecter quartet saw the most erudite of incarcerated cannibals gnaw his way into mass consciousness by way of Jonathan Demme’s 1991 film version. More than three decades on, Gionfriddo returns to the book to pick over the horrors anew. The fact that Lecter isn’t the villain of the piece but its conscience speaks volumes about the age in which he was sired.    In Harris’ tale of rookie FBI agent Clarice Starling’s search for a serial killer nicknamed Buffalo Bill who skins his victims, we enter a 1980s where the fallout of therapy culture has left a lot of psychological damage in its wake.    In Nikolai Foster’s touring production that began life at the Curve Theatre Leicester, John Partridge’s Lecter may initially lack charm as he is wheeled on like some caged exhibit, but his dangerous presen...

As the Fringe draws to a close this week, there is still plenty to see. The ten shows listed here are essential, and there is a lot more besides.   Stand Up if You’re Here Tonight Underbelly Bristo Square until 31 Aug, 4.40-5.35pm.  An under the radar delight came with American writer John Kolvenbach’s solo play, which sees actor Jim Ortlieb give a charmingly eccentric turn as he invites the audience to connect in a post Covid plea for humanity that is part pop psychology self help routine, part performance lecture and part private confessional.     Supposing:  Traverse Theatre until 30 Aug, various times.  Zinnie Harris’ new play for the Traverse shows what happens to an ordinary everyday woman after she falls down a hole in the road and starts having visions, is soundtracked by a Greek chorus in her head and develops a righteous fury at the world at large. Harris’ own production sees a magnificent Nicole Cooper bring Harris’ mercurial writing to life as a...

The Studio Four stars    Something is cooking in Jaha Koo’s culinary dissection of exile, and it smells very much like home. For Koo, this means South Korea by way of Berlin, Brussels and beyond. Scenes of dancing neon on the roads and in the skyscrapers are projected on to a triangular tent construction that Koo eventually unfolds to build a pojangmacha, a portable street food stand that becomes Koo’s stage, kitchen and sanctuary.    Grabbing a couple of audience members from the front row à la 1970s TV cookery show The Galloping Gourmet, Koo proceeds to cook and feed them several courses of Korean delicacies. As he does so, a memoir of Koo’s very personal journey unfolds, taking in conflicts local and global en route to finding his way back to a very different South Korea.    In what is already a bittersweet taster, Koo’s story is helped along, first by a snail, then by a gummy bear, and finally by an electric eel. These all appear in animated form on scr...

Scottish Parliament Four stars   A winter coat and a kept promise isn’t too much to ask for in this theatrical installation that looks at the iniquities of the care system through the voices and experiences of those who have been through it. The National Theatre of Scotland’s main contribution to Edinburgh’s festivals season is an interactive critique of a failed system which isn’t looking like it’s going to get better any time soon.   An initiative led and scripted by playwright Nicola McCartney, One Hundred Voices forms part of Caring Scotland, a three-year listening project that has recorded and documented the experiences of Care Experienced people across the country. From this premise, audiences are navigated through an audio-visual tour of the care system in all its institutional messiness. Our guide - officially, at least - is Brian, an industry professional who does things by the book. Brian speaks to us through headphones, and is assisted - unofficially - by Kayla, who...

Assembly George Square  Four stars    Liane is angry in Corinne Salisbury’s new solo play, which looks at the murky extremes of what we now call toxic masculinity. Liane’s anger is understandable. One minute she’s taking a walk in the park after her Pilates class and trying to figure out how her primary school age daughter can deal with playground bully boys. The next she’s fending off the overtures of a fedora sporting stranger in broad daylight. Once she starts digging, the man who accosted her turns out to have a very disturbing history approaching women uninvited. Even worse, he’s not alone in his everyday abuse, but is part of an organised alliance that plans their moves and shares their every action.   One of Liane’s responses to this in Salisbury’s punchy monologue is to enrol her and her daughter Molly in a boxing class run by her brother’s ex, Nathalie. Forming an alliance with Molly’s best friend’s mum Angela, the trio become a force to be reckoned with as ...

Royal Lyceum Theatre Four stars.     The strange fruit is already hanging when the curtain slowly rises on Zora Howard’s devastating play to reveal three black men lined up close like pretty maids in a row. With their hands tied behind their backs and their legs dangling above a tree trunk like plinth, the extended silence that accompanies the presence of this seemingly unconscious trio allows to sink in exactly what we are witnessing.    As the men come awake, the double edged sword of the play’s title becomes clear as Slim, Blood and Bird bicker, banter and sing the dirtiest blues before they contort in pain as invisible nooses tighten, and the same routine repeats ad nauseam.    The three men, of course, are the symbolic victims of assorted assaults on .black community down the ages. And in Howard’s own production for the New York based Flea Theater, they are sentenced to some Beckettian limbo as they are given voice inbetween the agony.  ...

Pitlochry Festival Theatre Four stars   Happy families aren’t exactly in abundance in this long overdue revival of Iain Heggie’s care home set play, which sees ageing matriarch Andrene wheeled hither and thither in her confused search for a way out. Instead, what we get is the darkest of Joe Orton style sit-coms that sees Andrene doted on by nurse Larry, only for her errant son Derek and his gobby new girlfriend Kath to turn up. With Andrene’s fortune up for grabs, Larry and Derek have some unfinished business of their own, which at least one of them is about to pay for.    Twenty-five years after Heggie’s play first appeared at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre, Sam Hardie’s studio production for Pitlochry Festival Theatre brings this freshly rewritten version to life in slow burning and forensic fashion. This doesn’t take away the intermittent hilarity of Heggie’s meticulously constructed farce, but also highlights some of the bleakness of the situation Derek especially...

Zoo Playground Four stars The walls are closing in and the roof is falling down on Cynthia and Gilberto, the bickering couple at the heart of Dante Passarelli’s claustrophobic little play. In the gloom of their spartan apartment, the pipes are gurgling and the entire place is creaking. The entire building sounds like it is on borrowed time and could collapse any second. This would be a blessing to the property developers who are hemming in Cynthia and Gilberto with the shiny new monoliths being built around them. It would also save on demolition costs. For Cynthia and Gilberto, however, this is home, even if the woman upstairs looks set to create an accidental flood by keeping her taps on.    This is a gloriously manic piece of grotesquery by Passarelli, who co-directs with Fernanda Zancopé for this production by Brazil’s Manás Theatre Lab. Part of this year’s Sao Paolo Showcase, this is performed in Portuguese with English surtitles projected onto the sickly coloure...

Traverse @ Lyceum Studio Four stars   Paul Ready’s new solo work ends as it begins, as a talking point concerning a matter of life and death. With the audience sat in a circle in the harsh light of the Lyceum rehearsal room, Ready stands at the centre, his unnamed character dressed in a city boy suit that belies his gentle delivery. He could be about to do a TED talk or some ghastly presentation illustrated with slides and whatever the digital equivalent of flip charts might be. As it is, as he paces, he is preparing to give a eulogy to his best friend Richard, who died drowning.    As we are told, Ready’s character and Richard had been inseparable ever since they were kids, and if things had turned out differently, they would have likely seen out their dotage together. Somewhere along the way, however, the world changed, and what for Ready’s character was a life of aspiration and acquisition, for Richard became one of opposition as he tried to save the planet. With moral...

Collective, Edinburgh 4 Stars The 197 reconstructed ancient amulets that make up Katie Paterson’s latest artistic and environmental excavation are laid out on a bespoke round table designed by international architects Zeller & Moye, and made out of sycamore by East Lothian based Silvan Studio. The display may bring to mind the sort of hipster emporium where magic happens after dark as demons are invoked, but each intricately constructed piece that makes up Paterson’s sculptural installation has a story of its own.   Made from materials drawn from landscapes and environments under threat, the five sections - Biosphere; Hydrosphere; Cryosphere; Place & Climate; and Wildfire - cast Paterson as a Scheherazade like figure. As she breathes new life into old forms, it is a reminder of their strength gathered across centuries.    Gathered together as both memorial and homage, as Paterson’s labours bring home the fragile eco system each piece sprung from, as a brand n...

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh Four stars    When Gwen John (1876-1939) wrote how ‘A beautiful life is one led, perhaps, in the shadow, but ordered, regular, harmonious’ it was a self aware summation of her own quiet devotions, both in life and work.    The Edinburgh leg of this major exhibition in partnership with Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales in Cardiff prior to dates at Yale Center for British Art and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC, marks the 150 th anniversary of John’s birth. It brings together more than 200 of her paintings, contextualised here in such a way as to reveal the connections, repetitions and variations pursued by John with an understated but passionate intensity.   This runs throughout her portraits of unsmiling women, her beloved cat, and the nuns she looked to after converting to Catholicism. With each set lined up in groups, one can play a game of spot the difference with the same enigmatic ...

The Studio Four stars   Hollywood might have ended up a very different place if America’s House Un-American Activities Committee hadn’t assured everyone they accused of being communists was blacklisted. One of those questioned by the committee was Bertolt Brecht, the German playwright who had already been in exile since he left Germany in 1933 as the rise of the Nazis left his politically charged work somewhat out of goosestep.    Having only been in America for a year when he appeared before the HUAC in 1947, he left the country the day after and eventually went back to East Germany, where he founded the Berliner Ensemble. As with other great drama created by HUAC hounded artists, such unintended consequences can create great accidental legacies.    Brecht’s exile and his appearance before the committee are the starting point for this intense construction by Lebanese artistic duo Lina Majdalanie and Rabih Mroué. Presented alongside pianist Henrik Kair...

Pitlochry Festival Theatre Four stars   The world doesn’t end in Oliver Emanuel’s play, but sometimes that’s how it feels. Over its bite-size 70-minute duration, Emanuel’s play is a living monument that preserves the emotional paper trails that chart the magic moments of people’s lives. Originally seen in a studio based version in 2024, the play charts the love affair of two people, played here by Alan Cumming and Shirley Henderson, who become arbiters of something eternal that came in the shape of this play.    He is a terminal adolescent who’s just been chucked hard enough to provoke him to spend his nights playing Radiohead at full blast. She is living next door, and puts a postcard through his letterbox to ask him to turn that racket down. When they meet, the rest is history. As we watch them relive their life together, that history is barely contained in a box of old tickets, receipts, a jar of confetti and magical origami creations.    The play was wr...