Coffee-Table Notes

Big grown up plays are very much the order of the day in Scottish theatre’s homegrown summer seasons throughout June. Significantly, perhaps, only two of these are musicals, demonstrating that it is still possible to create powerful theatre without making a song and dance about it.    Stand & Deliver: The Lee Jeans Sit-In Cumbernauld Theatre, 6 June; Beacon Arts Centre, Greenock, 9-10 June.  Final dates for Frances Poet’s musical play about the 1981 strike by women workers in the Greenock Lee Jeans factory in what should be a powerful return home to the place where it all happened. This co-production between the National Theatre of Scotland, and the Tron Theatre, Glasgow was developed out of conversations with some of the 240 women involved in the strike, the play looks at how they stood up for themselves and each other over the seven-month dispute. The Herald called it ‘a spirited tribute to the power of the people’.     Sweat Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburg...

Òran Mór, Glasgow Four stars   As Scotland’s latest World Cup hopes come into view over the next few weeks, Joe McCann’s debut play is a timely look at one of the country’s lesser-spotted footballing greats. Back in the nineteenth century, Andrew Watson arrived in the UK from Demerara, British Guiana, the mixed race son of a wealthy sugar plantation owner father and a Guianese mother. While at university in Glasgow, Watson discovered football, and went on to become the first black player in association football at international level, who became star striker and captain of Queen’s Park. Watson also captained Scotland’s national team in three games that saw them hammer England twice, with the first game, a 6-1 victory for Watson’s team, remaining a record home defeat for England.   This is more than enough to get the faithful rallying behind Watson in McCann’s play, performed with heart by a solo Dayton Mungai, who begins with a question to the audience. Several others fol...

Theatre Royal, Glasgow Three stars    Relocation, relocation, relocation is the order of the day in this new stage adaptation of Barbet Schroeder’s 1992 schlocky horror psycho-sexual thriller. Drawn from John Lutz’s novel from two years earlier, SWF Seeks Same, the story imagines what happens when a woman’s new flatmate turn out to be mad, bad and very dangerous to know.    Moving house is not only theprime drive for Lisa Faulkner’s Allie as she and her teenage daughter Bella move into a building with seriously shonky electrics after Allie finally ditches Bella’s feckless dad, Sam. Nor is it just about Allie’s new lodger, Hedy, played by Kym Marsh as a Yorkshire sired cuckoo in the nest.    Writer Rebecca Reid has taken the steamy stateside des-res of the film and moved it lock, stock and homicidal kitchen knife to what appears to be a collapsing British suburban tower block. Not only that, Reid has whooshed things forward a few decades from the angsty and ...

Factories have been working overtime in my mind of late. As the Herald’s theatre critic, I recently watched the National Theatre of Scotland and the Tron Theatre’s production of Frances Poet’s new play, Stand & Deliver, take a musical look at the 1981 sit-in at Greenock’s Lee jeans factory.  A week later, I saw Sweat, the Citizens Theatre Glasgow and Royal Lyceum Edinburgh’s revival of Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize winning 2015 play about what happens to a mid American steel town when the plug is pulled on the factory that gave that town its economic lifeblood.   My more personal interest in factories just now is to do with The Machine Stops. This is a project I'm part of that is set to take place as part of Hidden Door, the grassroots Edinburgh arts festival that takes over abandoned buildings and transforms them into unique temporary venues.   This year’s Hidden Door returns to The Paper Factory, the vast former cardboard packaging plant close to Edinburgh Airp...

Pitlochry Festival Theatre Four stars   You know the craic. You step into a late night music bar, the joint is jumping, and you walk out with your life turned upside down. Or at least this is what happens to the Dublin troubadour at the heart of Enda Walsh’s musical stage version of John Carney’s hit big screen romance. The catalyst for this wake up call is a turbo charged Czech pianist who tunes into his sad eyed laments and decrees they make an album together. Rounding up a group of misfits Commitments style, an all night burst of creativity sees them set down a classic before everything has to change once more.   As those who have seen either the film or John Tiffany’s Tony award winning Broadway production will already know, beyond the pair’s obvious chemistry, it’s complicated. For one unrepeatable moment, however, the international language of music and the emotional sparks that fly from it are the only things that matter.    As an opening gambit for Alan Cummi...

Dundee Rep Four stars   When Willy Russell's Pygmalion like tale of a working class hairdresser’s getting of wisdom by way of an Open University literature course run by a pickled ex poet first appeared in 1980, social mobility and education for all was still a possibility. If set today, lecturer Frank would have long been made redundant, while Rita’s thirst for knowledge would likely have been thwarted by fees that would have left her in debt forever. More recently, Rita’s spirit has been brought bang up to date in Jade Franks’ Edinburgh Festival Fringe hit, Eat the Rich (but maybe not me mates x), and it is only a matter of time before Franks slips into Rita’s scuffed shoes and plays her dramatic ancestor for real.    In the meantime, we should be grateful for this latest incarnation of what is now a period piece that remains a glorious riff on the old adage of how a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, be it for better or worse. Debbie Hannan’s production sees Frank ...

Òran Mór, Glasgow Three stars   When two lesbian bikers of a certain age walk into an island bar, it’s no joke for teenage Ruari in Ryan Hay’s new play for A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s ongoing lunchtime theatre season. Helen and Jane have been around the block together, a high-speed double act of Harley Davidsons, leather jackets and war stories about seeing Joan Jett and the Runaways at Glasgow Apollo. Things are changing, however, not least for Ruari, who runs the bar in their dad’s seemingly permanent absence, and is doing a lot of growing up beyond serving whisky after hours.    There is a lot going on in Hay’s play, set over three years when Helen and Jane drop in to the bar for weekend breaks. While much is left unsaid, the late night debates that eventually cut loose sound at points like textbook guides to dealing with the growing pains of becoming who you want to be.    Caitlin Skinner’s low-key slow burn of a production brings this rites of passage p...

Citizens Theatre, Glasgow Four stars   When idealistic young aid worker Samira leaves Glasgow for Jordan in 2010 in the wake of the Arab Spring, she is on a mission to change the world she thinks she understands. As a mixed race Muslim abroad, however, bearing witness from afar may be one thing, but squaring up to frontline atrocities on a daily basis as she moves rapidly from one crisis to another is traumatic enough to leave her profoundly affected by the events around her.    The world may have moved on since Mariem Omari’s solo play inspired by her own experiences first appeared in 2021, but in terms of the fall out of what has happened in the Middle East since then, things have only changed for the worse.    A vibrant performance from Olivia Hemmati forms the heart of Shilpa T-Hyland’s production for the Citizens’ Theatre’s associate company, Bijli Productions, which steps out for a full tour in this redeveloped version of the play. As Samira becomes engulf...

Òran Mór , Glasgow Four stars   Eyes are very much down for a full house in this new play by Marc Pye and Gayle Telfer Stevens, the latest lunchtime extravaganza as part of the current A Play, a Pie and a Pint season. Angie and Linda are pretty much addicted to the allure of the bingo hall, which offers some kind of lifeline, as well as potentially sorting out their respective financial woes. If Angie doesn’t get to call ‘House’, chances are she’ll lose hers.    Linda and Angie’s daughters Stacey and Amy, meanwhile, have other plans, and perish the thought of following in their mothers’ footsteps. With a cool 40k a winning number away, however, Stacey could bankroll her online influencer lifestyle and get some work done on herself, while Amy could kick-start her dog grooming business in style. All it takes to change their lives is one stolen membership card.    There is a lot more going on than meets Kelly’s Eye in Pye and Telfer Stevens’ sit-com style affair. ...

One could be forgiven for thinking that Alan Cumming has been in post as artistic director of Pitlochry Festival Theatre longer than he has. Such has been Cumming’s public profile of late, be it hosting events, starring in a stage musical of his and Forbes Masson’s 1980s sitcom, The High Life, or being interviewed on these pages after being named the most influential person in Scotland's art scene for 2026, his ubiquity goes before him. As it is, Cumming’s first season that he’s programmed for the Perthshire based theatre actually only opens this month. This will also mark the 75th anniversary of PFT, when visionary impresario John Stewart first put on theatre in a tent. Cumming’s programme celebrates in spectacular style. This comes with Once, a new production of the hit musical that reunites the original creative team led by director John Tiffany for this multiple Tony winning show. This is followed by Inexperience, a new studio play by Douglas Maxwell, while Maureen Beattie will...

Òran Mór , Glasgow Four stars   What happened one sunny day in 2021 on Glasgow’s south side when agents of the UK Home Office were thwarted from removing two Sikh men of Indian descent from their homes has become an inspiration for our times. The spontaneous show of mass solidarity that rose up that day has already been documented in Felipe Bustos Sierra’s film, Everybody to Kenmure Street. Playwright Simon Jay has here picked up the baton with a verbatim approach to his new play drawn from the day’s events. The result in this latest lunchtime production for A Play, a Pie and a Pint mixes interviews and anecdotal accounts with a little old school polemic to tell the story.    Key to this is the song by Kenmure Street residents Craig and Rachel Smillie written within days of the event, and which here acts as a folksy refrain as actors Nesha Caplan, Kal Sabir and Betty Valencia replay what happened. This moves from the initial response to the eventual release of the men fro...

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Five stars   For those on side, Cowdenbeath Football Club may never have been premiere league material, but they have always occupied a field of dreams. This is made clear in Gary McNair’s wonderful new stage adaptation of Ron Ferguson’s 1993 book, ostensibly a love letter to the club that becomes a funny and profound meditation on the collective power of football fandom as a form of everyday devotion.   So it goes with McNair’s version, which sees Cowdenbeath native Sally make a reluctant prodigal’s return to the Fife mining town following the death of her football daft dad. The deal is that Sally is to scatter her old man’s ashes onto the pitch at CFC’s home ground of Central Park, but only after they win a game. As historical statistics show, alas, the 1991/92 season when Sally made her promise wasn’t exactly a walk in the park in terms of getting a resuls, which is why she finds herself spending more weekends than she bargained for on t...

The Playhouse, Edinburgh  Four stars   Everybody wants a piece of Jenna in Jessie Horton and Sara Bareilles’ smash hit musical, which celebrates its tenth anniversary on its latest UK tour. Based on the late Adrienne Shelly’s film of the same name, writer Horton and composer Bareilles’ confection is a bittersweet affair served up in Abbey O’Brien’s all singing, all dancing restaging of Diane Paulus’ original production with all the trimmings.    Jenna is the waitress of the show’s title, who may bake the best pies in the American South in Joe’s Pie Diner, but who remains stuck in a dead end marriage with abusive husband Earl. With a baby on the way, Jenna looks set to be even more trapped. Also working in the diner are Becky and Dawn, with whom Jenna forms an unbreakable trio in the face of assorted men folk. While Jenna finds Dr. Pomatter has an impeccable bedside manner, geeky Dawn does a whole lot of re-enacting with oddball Ogie, while Becky gets behind the ...

Perth Theatre Four stars   Everyone is a star in Morag Fullarton’s latest remake of a Hollywood classic. Following Casablanca The Gin Joint Cut and It’s a Wonderful Life… Mostly, this reimagining of Billy Wilder’s 1950 showbiz noir  is scaled up to something more suitably epic after being  first seen back in 2015 as a lunchtime show at Oran Mor.    The appeal of putting it back on stage isn’t hard to fathom. Here, after all, is a big picture that mythologises its own world by way of what happens to screenwriter Joe Gillis. Gillis has become the accidental toy boy of faded silent movie queen Norma Desmond after being drafted in to write her back into the spotlight. While Norma is watched over by her devoted butler, Max, Joe teams up with script reader Betty Schaefer, who has her own plans for Joe.    As if such a tangled web wasn’t already a multi-tiered potboiler, Fullarton gift-wraps her production by framing it with Wilder casting his new opus, and t...

Water is at the centre of Sarah Calmus’s world in Right to Roam, as the Edinburgh based artist follows up on her recent multi-screen intervention, Uisge, viewable on Potterow in Edinburgh, with a full-on immersive experience. Calmus’s exhibition takes its title from the internationally recognised notion of a public right to access public and privately owned land. Focusing on the River Forth, she utilises moving image, sculpture, sound and screenprints to take a deep dive into environmental pollution, climate change and how the natural landscape is threatened.   “I wanted to talk about this idea within the lens of water,” Calmus says of an exhibition that has its roots in a residency in Sweden. “I swim in the Forth quite a lot, and I also row, and because of where I live in Newhaven I see the river every morning, so I'm all about the water, so I thought I would hone in on this conversation about the right to roam and really focus on water. We're all made of water, and the tides ...

The Playhouse, Edinburgh Four stars   A big blood red spotlight engulfs the stage as an eerie underscore plays while the lights go down on this trimmed down version of Shakespeare’s Scottish play. Arguably the bard’s best-known saga has been seen in many forms over the last few centuries. His is tale of doomed ambition and men who would be king probably hasn’t been seen that often with such rapid fire brevity as this new version by the Hove based Out of Chaos company. Perhaps with latter day low attention span in mind concerning this set text friendly epic, director Mike Tweddle here oversees a version featuring just two actors who manage to fast forward through the Macbeths rise and fall in a speedy eighty minutes.    Hannah Barrie and Paul O’Mahoney may be centre-stage much of the time as the fortune hunting Macbeths, but they also double up as a full supporting cast of assorted monarchs, thanes and soldiers in arms without missing a beat. They also do a turn as the wei...

Citizens Theatre, Glasgow Five stars    Sparks fly on the factory floor at the start of Joanna Bowman’s explosive revival of Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize winning play, first seen in 2015, but looking more pertinent than ever. As a portent of things to come, this opening image is as telling as the fact that the sides of Francis O’Connor’s set look like a cage, inside which, some kind of combat takes place. This is how it is, not just in the factory, but in the bar where the workers splash their wages around, and almost certainly in the prison the two young men at the heart of the play have just been released from.    The time moves between the turn of the century when it felt like people could get by, to eight years later when the world has changed. The place is Reading, Pennsylvania, a blue-collar heartland fired by iron and steel. Here, Tracey, Cynthia and Jessie spend their down time getting hammered, as do Tracey’s son Jason and Cynthia’s boy Chris. The...

Òran Mór, Glasgow Four stars   Hannah Howie has something to get off her chest. The clue is in the title of the actress and singer’s new cabaret style show, the latest mini musical to grace A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s ongoing lunchtime theatre season. Howie’s extravaganza is founded on the life changing diagnosis that she had an 85 per cent chance of contracting cancer. She subsequently turned her decision to have a double mastectomy into something she can have a song and dance about.    Howie does this with the aid of her two little helpers who each represent her Left Breast and her Right Breast, aka Georgia and Freda. As Howie struts her stuff all dressed up in suitably funereal black, G and F are brought to life by Kirsty Malone and Gregor John-Owen, who back her up as assorted comedy doctors as well as busting some moves in step with their mistress. Given that each has a personality of their own - Georgia is the feisty one, Freda the smaller of the two - it is only rig...