Coffee-Table Notes

Central Hall, Edinburgh Four stars   A community hall vibe percolates the room for this Mayday extravaganza put together by actress/director Cora Bissett and poet and playwright Hannah Lavery for the National Theatre of Scotland. This one night compendium of theatre, music and spoken word aims to be ‘Rapid Responses to Our Times’. With an election due in less than a week’s time, the rise of the far right, events in Gaza, institutionalised racism, historical revisionism and all points between are put on the frontline by way of a series of artistic responses to the volatile and divisive times we currently live in. The result is an old school political cabaret writ large.    This is kick-started in noisily unambiguous fashion by singer Declan Walsh with the punky oppositionist rage of his song, Nazi Boys, accompanied by a house band featuring guitarist Djana Gabrielle. Gabrielle later performs one of the night’s standout moments, when she sings Dala, written b...

Usher Hall, Edinburgh Four stars   “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” By rights, the then Johnny Rotten’s almost final words as a Sex Pistol at the end of a shambolic 1978 San Francisco show should have marked the death knell of punk. Now here we are almost half a century on, and the snot-nosed anti establishment rebellion is packing in those who keep the faith at the fanciest concert hall in town. The nostalgic night out that follows is as showbiz as any other rock and roll revival, and none the worse for it.   A three-piece house band set the tone as they plough through an authentic sounding Anarchy in the UK. The rapid-fire assault of now classic pop-punk hits that follow is introduced by a leather-jacketed Kevin Kennedy, aka Coronation Street’s Curly Watts. Kennedy’s musical roots in Manchester include a stint in teenage band Paris Valentinos with future Smiths Johnny Marr and Andy Rourke. This makes for a perfect CV to be the night’s MC and Narrator.   ...

Four stars The monumental gloom of Nelson Monument on Calton Hill is saturated with ever morphing constellations of light for Ten Thousand Miles of Edge, writer Robin Robertson’s exile’s travelogue for this year’s Message from the Skies compendium of five city-wide site-specific installations. Branded Shorelines, and with numerous public partners supporting Edinburgh’s Hogmanay’s after-dark walkabout, the event is designed to usher in 2020’s Year of Coasts and Waters. Lit up by the Bright Side organisation’s dazzling projections, and pulsed by Alasdair Roberts’ tantric neo-folk soundscape, Robertson’s piece maps out an incantatory meditation on the coasts that shaped him. The Union Canal in Fountainbridge finds Kathleen Jamie’s Seascape with WEC a poetic love letter to new wave energy converters she saw being tested on Orkney. Bright Side’s projections of Thomas Moulson’s artwork bob into view like a 1970s public information cartoon abstraction. On George Street, Lightkeepers ...

SWG3, Glasgow Four stars It’s Friday night, five minutes after the UK failed to leave the EU as planned. Onstage at the end of the National Theatre of Scotland’s multi-artform compendium of short works intended to mark the occasion, Angus Farquhar, late of 1980s percussive provocateurs Test Dept and creators of monumental spectacle NVA is playing marimba with his comrade Cameron Sinclair. This follows a moving personal testimony of what Europe means to Farquhar in a piece called Second Citizen. Set to a techno beat, Farquhar’s performance sees him getting back to his roots in every way. Co-curated by NTS artistic director Jackie Wylie and Stewart Laing of Untitled Projects, the evening begins with compere Gary McNair asking why politicians can’t be like artists and work to the deadline they’ve been given. This is an all too pertinent gambit prior to opening act Tam Dean Burn appearing dressed as a pirate for Aquaculture Flagshipwreck, a comic dissection of Scotland’s fishing...

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars It could be the warm-up to a ceilidh at the start of Kolbrun Bjort Sigfúsdóttir and Tom Oakes’ poetic meditation on what it means to build a home in the place you love, only to have the foundations of that home ripped from under you. And yes, even as the recorded accordion music plays, we’re very much talking Brexit here, as Iceland-born Sigfúsdóttir and English emigre Oakes relate in the quietest of terms how things have changed over the last three years. Sigfusdottir does this through a series of brief monologues spoken directly to the audience. Inbetween, Oakes plays a series of traditional and original tunes picked up on his travels on bouzouki and wooden flute. Finland, Morocco and beyond are all in the mix. While Oakes plays, Sigfúsdóttir kneels on the floor, building little miniature houses out of sand and clay, before breaking them down into nothing once more, only to keep on building it into something ever stronger. The exp...