Coffee-Table Notes

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...

Shedinburgh was one of the most striking artistic initiatives of the pandemic. With live events closed down along with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in its entirety in 2020, throughout August of that year, its online pop-up programme provided a lifeline for a world that had been forced to shut up shop.   Initiated by Fleabag and Baby Reindeer producer Francesca Moody with Harriet Bolwell and writer / performer Gary McNair, Shedinburgh live-streamed 25 performances from two sheds set up in the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh and London’s Soho Theatre, reaching over 5000 people worldwide.   As the world slowly reopened, 2021 saw Shedinburgh offer up a mixed Edinburgh programme of live and digital presentations. It was 2025, however, when the venue came into its own as a full on live programme showcasing thirty-six shows by more than 100 artists.   With Francesca Moody Productions at the helm, this year sees Shedinburgh bursting at the seams with some 150 performances of new wor...

The world may be about to descend on Edinburgh for its assorted festivals, but there is plenty happening elsewhere in the country in August, as a small army of powerful women on stage appear to be taking the lead. The first four shows have their final dates this weekend, so grab a ticket while you can.   Lear Pitlochry Festival Theatre, until 1 August Maureen Beattie takes the title role in Finn den Hertog’s new adaptation of Shakespeare’s saga of sanity, madness and the family in a very personal take on the play that nevertheless remains faithful to the original. As an ageing matriarch only wanting to be told by her daughters how special she is, while Goneril and Regan tell her what she wants to hear, Ailsa Davidson’s Cordelia is having none of it. The result sees Lear lose the plot and do a runner, tended to by Cordelia’s clown doctor Fool, while her big sisters embark on a war that looks like something Quentin Tarantino might have dreamt up if he’d gone cyberpunk. This is Beatti...

The workers have been out in force in Scottish theatre of late. On stage, at least, there seems to have been a dramatic rediscovery of working class culture and blue-collar history. This could be seen in the National Theatre of Scotland and Tron Theatre production of Stand & Deliver: The Lee Jeans Sit-In, Frances Poet's musical inspired by the v1981 strike in Greenock. Then there was Sweat, a co-production between the Citizens Theatre Glasgow and Royal Lyceum Edinburgh of Lynn Nottage's dramatisation of what happens to a small town when the industry that sustained it pulls out. Dundee Rep’s revival of Educating Rita, Willy Russell’s modern classic about a working-class hairdresser who enrols in an Open University literature course, is also indicative of a prevailing class divide. Offstage, meanwhile, in a reflection of sorts of the themes of these plays, it is getting harder to sustain a career in theatre. This isn’t just the case for the actors who are the public face of S...

As July sees the theatre season wind down into something of a calm before the August Edinburgh storm, there is nevertheless a fair bit of on stage action on offer. Bard in the Botanics and Pitlochry Festival Theatre lead the charge with at least one show that will feature a storm, so not that calm at all, really.   Twelfth Night  Botanic Gardens, Glasgow, Until 11 July. Lovers and Madmen is the theme for Bard in the Botanics’ silver jubilee summer season of outdoor Shakespeare. This new production of the bard’s contrarily sunny comedy probably falls very much in the former camp, as shipwrecked twins Viola and Sebastian are separated on the island of Illyria, embarking on assorted mistaken identity sired adventures until the inevitable happy ending brings them and their respective squeezes together once more. All this is likely to be upstaged, in Jennifer Dick’s production, mind you, by the figure of the yellow stocking clad Malvolio in a production featuring some Bard in the B...