Coffee-Table Notes

Now we’re in lockdown, home entertainment is vital for the soul. But where to go and what to do? In the lead-up to the current state of curfew in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic following the closure of theatres, concert halls, galleries and music venues, the energy moved online. One of the first out the traps was Cryptic, the Glasgow-based music-theatre company, who took their Cryptic Nights initiative online in a concert reported in these pages last week, and which saw electronic auteurs Aeger Smoothie, LinhHafornow and Alex Smoke perform in an empty Glad Café. With Pitlochry Festival Theatre forced to close its production of Barefoot in the Park after one night, artistic director Elizabeth Newman has kick-started both a fund-raising campaign and a series of online video shorts that comes in three strands. The first is a series of daily poems read by actors including Rufus Sewell. The second is a series of children’s’ activities to help entertain youngsters at home. The third

Nothing Spreads Like Fear. This is the tag-line for Contagion, Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 film about a global pandemic and the subsequent loss of social order before scientists eventually identify and contain the virus with a new vaccine. Given some of the hysteria in response to the real-life Covid-19 Coronavirus pandemic we’re currently in the thick of, there are few more apt descriptions of the toilet-roll panic buyers currently turning supermarkets into Ballardian wastelands. In the current climate, Soderbergh’s film sounds like both prophecy and warning. I missed Contagion when it first came out, though I intend rectifying this oversight utilising the new breadth of downtime I’ve suddenly acquired since all the theatres closed this week. It appears I’m not the only one keen to see the film. According to my colleague Russell Leadbetter, who has seen it, Contagion is currently at number two in the Amazon Prime chart, with its level of online hires second only to Harry Potter.

The announcement last week that KT Tunstall will host the Assembly Rooms’ Music Hall stage alongside fellow traveller Pictish Trail and local singer-songwriter Alannah Moar as part of this Saturday’s Burns&Beyond Culture Trail is a welcome addition to the four-hour compendium of Edinburgh city centre events. Presented by the capital’s long-standing promoters, Unique Events, the addition of Blue Rose Code, aka singer-songwriter Ross Wilson, will see Wilson bring a full band and string section to Greyfriars Kirk. The presence of such major artists in Burns&Beyond’s three-week celebration of Robert Burns that also sees in Edinburgh Chinese New Year gives the programme a deservedly higher profile. Beyond any notions of starriness, however, one of the key things about the Culture Trail is its localism. This is apparent across all stages that make up the Culture Trail, be it in the Gilded Balloon’s comedy line-up or the Chinese lanterns hanging in St Giles’ Cathedral, as wel