Coffee-Table Notes

Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh Four stars   Charles Dickens  has never  just been for Christmas, but at this time of year his seasonal masterpiece comes fully into focus. This was proven over the weekend in glowing fashion by Guy Masterson, the indefatigable Edinburgh Festival Fringe veteran, whose solo rendition of Dickens’ tale adapted by director Nick Hennegan gets back to the storytelling heart of Dickens’ own live renditions of his work.   Hennegan’s production for Theatre Tours International and Maverick Theatre Company is no piece of ornate Victoriana. Masterson embodies Dickens’ bustling world with gravitas and grit, using little more than a wooden chair and an old grey raincoat hanging from the rafters. Once he puts the latter on, it gives his  performance a swish, a swoop and a sweep that are captured like rapid fire snapshots in the moody lighting that accompanies it.    Masterson moves from narrator to the Dickens universe of characters with...

Edinburgh Playhouse Four stars “I did it in a loincloth,” declares Donny Osmond as a rock and roll Pharaoh while observing Adam Filipe’s more modestly attired Joseph kicking off this latest tour of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s now fifty-two year old musical. Osmond is clad in a gold coloured kilt as he makes this nod to his own tenure in the show’s title role during an American revival that ran for six years.     Osmond’s prodigal’s return is a rites of passage of sorts in Laurence Connor’s well drilled larger than life production of Rice and Lloyd Webber’s biblically inspired concoction. Felipe has this all to come as Joseph, the precocious dreamer whose brothers sell him into slavery, only for him to network his way out of prison and become Pharaoh’s economic saviour.   Things begin with the Narrator setting the scene by way of a storytelling session with the cast’s junior members before leaping into a kind of cosplay heaven as the child actors don false beards to...

Cumbernauld Theatre Four stars   It’s all going on down in Timbernauld, where grand dame carpenter Gepetta tends to her wares, kept company by the grandson she magicked into being with a carving knife and a not entirely pure imagination. While their flea ridden dog Mozart lollops about indoors to its heart’s content, Pinocchio longs to step outside to the big bad world he can only see through the window. A conscientious cricket called Hingmy, meanwhile, only wants to come in from the cold.    Gary McNair’s seasonal spin on Carlo Collodi’s much Disneyfied children’s story is both faithfully familiar and knowingly irreverent in its cheeky reimagining for this four-actor version brought to bright and energetic life in Laila Noble’s production.    As Julia Murray’s wide-eyed Pinocchio embarks on an adventure that sees him conned by radges and kidnapped by human traffickers, Cole Stewart’s Gepetta holds court with Caitlin Forbes as Mozart and Stephanie MacGaraidh as ...

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars It’s a rum old do down at Admiral Benbow’s Home for Reformed Pirates, where Duncan McLean’s new adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s swashbuckling romp first embarks. The seemingly washed up old sea dogs cared for by young Jim Hawkins band together to tell their story, as Jim, Lean Jean Silver and a puppet puffin set sail from Leith for the Orkney islands in search of buried booty.    Such is the playfully irreverent license taken by McLean in Wils Wilson’s rollickingly riotous production, set on Alex Berry’s galleon sized set of ropes, ladders and sails. What follows is a supremely daft take on Stevenson’s yarn that sees McLean tap into the ridiculous spirit of The Merry Mac Fun Co, the punky 1980s theatre troupe he co-founded, performed with and wrote for.    This is evident in some of the verbal riffs between the six actors on stage as well as some very silly song lyrics set to composer Tim Dalling’s Tom Waitsian junkya...

Dundee Rep Four stars   Oor Wullie without his bucket is like Christmas without a comic book annual. Dundee Rep’s revival of Noisemaker duo Scott Gilmour and Claire McKenzie’s musical reimagining of Scotland’s’s favourite cartoon boy is something of a double whammy in this respect.     As our spiky haired hero has his bucket poached from beneath him, prodigal daughter Nilo returns to Dundee to see her dad, though not before she is gifted an Oor Wullie annual by a mysterious woman on the train who goes by the name of Ms Watkins. As the book’s cover star steps out of the annual’s pages and into Nilo’s domain, Wullie rides again.    Andrew Panton’s production has been substantially rejigged since its first outing in 2019. While the quest for the missing bucket by Wullie and his pals remains the same, the changes in plot and characters maintain the show’s very meta take on family and friendship.    Much of this comes through the script’s Peter Pan like por...

Pitlochry Festival Theatre Four stars    Elizabeth Newman’s final show as Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s artistic director is the last in a hat-trick of in-house musicals that follows Beautiful: The Carole King Musical and Footloose. All three have featured Kirsty Findlay as their female lead. Here she completes a magnificent season as Maria, the untameable force of nature who becomes governess of uptight widower Captain von Trapp’s seven children. Maria’s presence brings the growing pains of all into sharp focus, as love and liberation blossom even as the Nazis muscle in and annexe Austria. For the von Trapps, the hills and exile beckon.   Newman has invested Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse’s perfectly constructed adaptation of the real Maria Rainer’s memoir with a freshness and a poignancy that makes for a moving and irresistible experience. With a cast of twenty singing and playing all instruments in what has become Pitlochry’s house style, from the show’s tit...

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Five stars   The world has been turned upside down several times over in the sixteen years since Matthew Zajac first performed his remarkable solo work in honour of his Polish/Ukrainian father who settled for the quiet life of the Highlands following the turmoil of the Second World War. A decade and a half on, and after more than 300 performances across the globe, the acquired baggage of Ben Harrison’s production for Zajac’s Dogstar company has gained a vital currency.    Following a sold out four week season in London, it is serendipitous that Zajac’s show arrives in Edinburgh for a brief run the week of Polish Independence Day. With Russia’s assault on Ukraine ongoing, Zajac’s play may be a deeply personal work, but as he embarks on a pilgrimage in search of his own roots, it becomes a hymn to much bigger histories. As illustrated on the map projected behind him on Ali Maclaurin’s set, those histories may have shaped the world, but they also ...

King’s Theatre, Glasgow Three stars   Someone had clearly let the dogs out before Wednesday night’s delayed curtain up of this new canine musical. Not that the young audience seemed to mind once things eventually got going after the runaway hounds had presumably been rounded up.    First on the scene was Pongo, the abandoned mutt whose adoption by puppy loving Danielle takes them on a walk in the park, where they become entangled with fellow pedigree Perdi and her human, Tom. From here this perfectly matched happy family embark on an adventure that sees them almost lost to the high fashion ambitions of Cruella de Vil. When dogs and cats combine forces, however, they knock spots off her.    Drawn from an original stage adaptation by Edinburgh based playwright Zinnie Harris, the show’s book by Glasgow panto legend Johnny McKnight with songs by Douglas Hodge look to Dodie Smith’s 1956 children’s novel rather than the 1961 Disney animated feature or its 1996 John Hu...

Lochgelly Centre Three stars If ever a strong political voice for the arts was needed, it is now. The fact that there isn’t currently one emanating from either Holyrood or Westminster brings shame on both Houses. What better time, then, to be reminded of Jennie Lee, the Fife firebrand who became the first ever Minister for the Arts, and who founded the Open University, championing education for all.    Lee had quite a life before such epoch making activity, as is brought home in Matthew Knights’ epic dramatic biography, which premiered at the weekend a stone’s throw from his subject’s birthplace 120 years ago. Coming at a time when arts buildings are fighting to survive, it is telling too that Knights’ play opened in a venue that might not have existed without Lee’s vision.    Knight sets out his store in Emma Lynne Harley’s production for the Angus based Knights Theatre in the variety theatre and hotel where Lee grew up, as the show’s three actors raid the dressing ...

Tramway, Glasgow Four stars   Sound and Vision are the heart of director Neil Bartlett’s theatrical reimagining of Derek Jarman’s final film, completed four months before his death from an AIDS related illness in 1994. Featuring an Yves Klein hued blue screen for the film’s full 74-minute duration, Blue features a collage of voices speaking excerpts from Jarman’s diary as he gradually lost his sight.    As Jarman ruminated on friends and lovers lost to what had been demonised as ‘the gay plague’, this opened up a bigger picture of a world that had been decimated. This was offset across several sections by a more impressionistic narrative.   Thirty years on, Bartlett brings a new quartet of voices to recount what has now become a (self) portrait of a major moment in late twentieth century social and political history. More than that, as the cast of Travis Alabanza, Joelle Taylor, Jay Bernard and Russell Tovey line up on stools beneath the screen, it becomes a rhapsody...

Theatre Royal, Glasgow Four stars   Life in the 1980s was the best of times for some, the worst for others. Few pop culture creations understood these two sides of the same credit card than John Sullivan’s masterly sit-com of working class aspiration during the Thatcherite boom years. At the show’s heart were siblings Del Boy and Rodney Trotter, the hapless duo attempting to navigate their way through life, but somehow never quite making a million.   This loving homage penned by Sullivan’s son Jim Sullivan with The Fast Show’s Paul Whitehouse revitalises Sullivan senior’s original with a bonus of the sort of showtunes that would make Lionel Bart’s back catalogue sound abstract by comparison. This is not to the detriment of Caroline Jay Ranger’s production, which brings the old gang back together in something akin to the big screen versions of sitcoms that filled cinemas back in the 1970s. Trigger, Boycie, Cassandra, Raquel and all the rest are in attendance in a series of smar...

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars   One of the many fine things achieved by Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s outgoing artistic director Elizabeth Newman is this unflinching production of Tennessee Williams’ 1947 play. Revived for this short Edinburgh run, Newman lays bare Williams’ study of one woman’s doomed attempts at bluffing her through her emotional baggage in the face of continual brutalisation.    One probably shouldn’t over psychologise Williams’ writing, but it is clear from Kirsty Stuart’s mercurial portrayal of Blanche DuBois here that she has been traumatised for some time. Landing unexpectedly in her sister Stella and her husband Stanley’s cramped apartment in a noisy New Orleans community, Blanche’s high maintenance ways have left her jobless, penniless and loveless.    Blanche finds herself cuckoo in a volatile nest, the claustrophobia of which sees a simmering power struggle between Blanche and Stanley for Stella’s attention. Blanche attrac...

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Four stars   When Jessie met Lana, it was lovelust at first sight. He was a would-be rock star playing covers in dive bars. She was a fashion student trying to make ends meet who ends up watching Jessie’s set on a night out. A couple of songs later and that was them for life. Or so they thought. Having a baby should have been a joy, but turned out to be agony, especially for Lana, who freefalls into deep depression while Jessie hits the big time on tour in America. Whether the one time dream team survive the fallout is a matter of life and death both of them need to confront.    It’s not hard to see the join between Jessie and Lana and The View’s vocalist Kyle Falconer and his partner Laura Wilde, who initiated this semi-autobiographical lo-fi rock musical first seen on home turf at Dundee Rep and on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2023.    Using songs from Falconer’s 2021 solo album, No Love Songs for Laura, as its starting point, Falcone...

Perth Theatre Four stars   It was sixty years ago last week, or thereabouts, when the Beatles embarked on a brief Scottish tour. Beatlemania may have already been at fever pitch, but rather than stay in swanky big city hotels, the loveable mop tops set up camp in two chalets on the banks of Loch Earn in Perthshire. This historical pop moment concerning the original boy band may be the backdrop to Gabriel Quigley’s new play, but it is another fab four she focuses on. The John, Paul, George and Ringo camped out on the other side of the loch are a gang of teenage girls so hopelessly devoted they have taken the names of their idols and braved the elements in their groovy gear in the hope of getting a long range glimpse of them.    With all four members of the gang considering options beyond this last gasp adventure before they go out into the world, this pilgrimage looks set to be a defining moment for them all in a rites of passage saga that takes in some very serious stuff ...

Cumbernauld Theatre Four stars The rise of the Men’s Shed movement has been a rare glimpse of positivity in a landscape of what we now call toxic masculinity. Clare Prenton’s new play for the recently formed Genesis Theatre Productions takes a peek behind the door into one such sanctuary, where three men of a certain age bicker, banter and bond over tea and biscuits as they gradually share what brought them there. Ex teacher Ken is letting off steam inbetween caring for his wife. Tom is still in mourning for his own spouse. And recovering alcoholic Jimmy may like to joke his way through things, but he is as emotionally raw as his unlikely contemporaries with whom he now shares space.  Opening with a series of out-front monologues from each of the trio, Prenton’s own production of her play draws from real life conversations with shedders to tap into a very real need for men to open up more about their everyday vulnerabilities.  Prenton has her cast play with the audience a litt...

The Studio, Edinburgh Four stars   Growing old gracefully isn’t easy these days. Once you reach that difficult age you are either patronised or else shunted out of the way in the name of care. Some people, however, simply refuse to kowtow to the system they have no say in legislating.    This is the case for James, Agnes and Nancy, Dementia the Musical’s unrelenting trio who are beamed down into a world of bureaucratic regimes and high backed armchairs that are unlikely to have graced their own homes if they were still allowed to live in them.    What follows sees James, Agnes and Nancy put on trial for being dementia activists by the tellingly named Rigid System. As played by Pauline Lockhart, Ms System is a lady not for turning. James, Agnes and Nancy, meanwhile, have their own stories to tell beyond the TV news reports beamed out between each of their testimonies.    It is these stories that count in Lewis based poet Ron Coleman’s play, brought to l...

Cumbernauld Theatre Four stars   Community spirit is everything in David Greig’s meditation on the aftermath of a mass shooting, revived after a decade in this new collaboration between Cumbernauld Theatre and the Glasgow based Wonder Fools company. As priest Claire attempts a forensic investigation into the reasons behind such a seemingly random attack by the young man who committed it, her quest involves conversations with her partner, her doctor, a right wing politician who may or may not have inspired the killer, and the boy himself.    Beyond this, the community choir she runs and which was decimated by the slaughter becomes a form of salvation. This is embodied by the seventeen-strong on stage ensemble drawn from real life North Lanarkshire communities who become the heart of Jack Nurse’s production.    Greig’s play may have been sired from the wreckage of Anders Breivik’s mass shooting of teenagers at a Norwegian summer camp in 2021, but in the ensuing de...

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Five stars   A haunting beauty pervades throughout Ramesh Meyyappan’s slow burning meditation on life, love and loss for this collaboration between the Vanishing Point and Raw Material companies in association with Aberdeen Performing Arts. The loss comes both physically and mentally for Harry, the old man at the heart of the piece. Harry has just taken up residence in a care home, with only his tireless carer May for company.    Harry can only communicate through sign language, which May can only half work out. As even that source of understanding starts to fade, Harry retreats into a world where past and present merge in an elegiac dreamscape shared with his true love, Elise.    Meyyappan’s starting point may be the debilitating effects of dementia, but in partnership with director Matthew Lenton he has created an emotionally driven tone poem full of light and shade. Much of the mood of the piece comes from Becky Minto’s set, which f...

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Four stars   Annie Lowry Thomas is flaked out on the sofa at the start of her new solo show for her Hacks company, coming down at the fag end of what was supposed to be the party to end them all. DJ Erfan Shojnoori is still playing in the corner and not all the balloons are burst yet. Thomas just needs a second wind to keep things going, is all. She’s just not sure where to turn and who to believe in anymore is all. Given the current state of the world, who can blame her?    What follows sees Thomas rewind to the New Labour landslide of 1997 that ended eighteen years of Conservative rule in the UK and was supposed to change everything. Thomas was five back then, and has been living its legacy ever since, right up to this year’s somewhat less euphoric Westminster victory that bookends her show.     Moving between the sofa and the microphone, Thomas delivers a frank and disarmingly funny autobiographical dissection of how we got to the state ...

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Four stars   When Greenpeace activists occupied the Shell UK owned decommissioned Brent Spar oil store off the coast of Shetland in 1995 to prevent it being sunk in the North Sea, little did anyone know that thirty years later it would inspire a new musical. This is exactly what the  Sleeping Warrior company have done, however, transforming the Brent Spar story into a rousing radio friendly pop drama that chimes with the times while remaining easy on the ear.    Writer/directors Andy McGregor and Isla Cowan set out their store on Brent Spar itself, brought to life by designer Claire Halleran as an iron and steel arena the Greenpeace activists make their own. The group are a motley mix of idealism and experience as epitomised by Matthew McKenna’s de facto leader Karl and Katie Weir’s hard liner Engel, with enthusiastic new recruits Colin, played by Nathan French, and Kara Swinney’s young mum Rachel also in tow. As personal and political...