Coffee-Table Notes

Citizens Theatre, Glasgow Four stars   A decade has passed since Ken Loach and Paul Laverty introduced the world to Daniel Blake, the Geordie carpenter stymied into submission by a welfare system that sees his life degenerate into a Kafkaesque nightmare. We know this by the recorded voices speaking the words of former UK prime ministers that are beamed onto a battered billboard throughout this equally powerful stage version by Dave Johns, the original Dan on screen. Given the amount of ex PMs racked up over the last few years, Mark Calvert’s production has had his work cut out to updating their verbatim platitudes, which now includes missives from Downing Street’s latest incumbents. That the action on stage remains unchanged speaks volumes about the state we’re still in.    For those who haven’t seen it, Dan has been signed off work by his doctor after a heart attack. This isn’t good enough for the powers that be, however, who are adamant on cutting every benefit they can...

Tron Theatre, Glasgow  Four stars   Teenage dreams come dead on arrival in Simon Longman’s blistering study of wasted youth, first seen in 2018 and revived here in dynamic fashion by director Anna Whealing and producer Aila Swan. This is delivered by an electrifying trio of young actors who, over the production’s relentless eighty-minutes, don’t let up for a second.    As Longman’s title suggests, the scene is a town on a barely inhabited island where a population of dead end kids alleviate their dead end lives by getting out of it on cheap cider and whatever substances they can get their hands on. Kate, Sam and Pete also have each other, clinging on for life itself with a no holds barred gang mentality that sees them rage with unfocused energy in search of something better.    Having left school with what careers advisors would call no prospects, and with brutal family lives only offering violence of one sort of another, the unholy trinity form a kind of s...

Òran Mór, Glasgow Four stars    When Scott meets Jess across a messy dancefloor on an Edinburgh night out, it is lust at first sight. A one-night stand before they both go off to university is all well and good, but what happens next turns both their lives upside down and binds them together forever.    Nathan Scott-Dunn’s new play for A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s lunchtime theatre season taps into the well worn unplanned and often unwanted baby trope that pretty much fuelled the black and white world of so called kitchen sink drama in the 1950s and 1960s. Mercifully things have moved on considerably in Scott and Jess’s twenty first century world, and while the couple’s experience is no less of a shock to them, some kind of happy ending is very much on the cards.    Edoardo Berto’s production opens with Scott and Jess preparing a time capsule type video for their newborn. This framing allows them to rewind their story to its neon lit beginnings all the way up...

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Three stars   Heroines - or protagonists as Abigail Dooley and Emma Edwards would have it - don’t always wear capes in the duo’s mythological rummage through what it means to be a woman of a certain age. Sometimes they get to wear beige Marks & Spencer’s long length cardigans, better known here as the Cloak of Invisibility. As fashion tips go, such apparel may not be what every woman wants, but they do come in handy sometimes.     Dooley and Edwards arrive on stage from behind a set of ancient stones that appear to be made of cotton wool wearing costumes seemingly leftover from a low budget 1970s kids sword and sorcery serial. A three headed Hydra sees visages of Vivienne Westwood, Dolly Parton and Kathy Burke gift them an all purpose tongue sharpener for answering back with style, and a pair of glasses for seeing straight.    Kitted out with such luxurious accessories, the pair embark on a gloriously hand knitted comic ...

The Studio, Edinburgh Three stars    Raskolnikov is a man alone in Laurie Sansom’s new adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 750 page nineteenth century epic, which sees the ascetic student’s attraction to seemingly mindless violence usher him into a moral maze that becomes a dark investigation of his inner soul. In Connor Curren’s mercurial portrayal, Raskolnikov is what newspaper reports might call a loner, who lives largely in his own head, plotting and scheming the downfall of everyone who isn’t him. When he kills, it comes from a mixture of thinking he’s better than his victims that runs parallel with a pathological envy of those in high places he so craves to sit among even as he loathes them.    Performed by just three actors in Sansom’s own production for the Yorkshire based Northern Broadsides company, this is Dostoevsky stripped bare. This is the case both in the focus on Raskolnikov’s angry young man style sense of superiority, as well as the way it leaves its...

Dundee Rep Four stars As lost horizons go, Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson’s short-lived 1994 sitcom could hardly be bettered in terms of rediscovery. The original saw Cumming and Masson cast themselves as Sebastian Flight and Steve McCracken, the cabin crew and in-flight double act of Air Scotia, Scotland’s best - and only - airline, in a riotous camperama that took retro styled kitsch into the stratosphere. With Sebastian and Steve aided and abetted by Siobhan Redmond’s terrifying trolley dolly Shona Spurtle and Patrick Ryecart’s space cadet Captain Duff, the sky was the limit. So too, alas, was the limbo Cumming and Masson’s sitcom maiden voyage was left in just as it appeared to be going places.  More than three decades on, and with the show’s creators flying high, they have joined forces with their natural theatrical heir Johnny McKnight to create this box set size musical reboot that sees Sebastian, Steve and the gang reunited as they set the controls for the heart of the fun ...

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Five stars    Matters of life and death are all part of the daily grind for Flora, the overworked nurse who comes blinking into the light in this remarkable theatrical collaboration between Glasgow’s Vanishing Point company and Teater Katapult of Aarhus, Denmark on a new play by Josephine Eusebius. Arriving in Glasgow after premiering in Aarhus, Matthew Lenton’s production opens with Flora on a strip lit hospital roof, where she is catching a moment’s solitude as she recovers from the stresses of her latest shift with a rare cigarette to get her through. This noirish image is heightened by the row of performers who sit at microphones behind her, speaking stage directions as well as the assorted voices off demanding her attention.    For much of the next sixty-five minutes it is only Flora, played by a tireless Lærke Schjærff Engelbrecht,  who occupies the main performing area, torn this way and that by an increasingly demanding ar...

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars   Love and marriage initially look like old school domestic bliss in Laura Wade’s reimagining of W. Somerset Maugham’s 1926 play. Beneath the all smiles surface and art deco interior, however, lies an unspoken world of infidelity and deceit. In wronged wife Constance, we also have one of the smartest fictional independent women of her time. As played in Tamara Harvey’s production by a luminescent Kara Tointon, Wade ramps this up considerably in a way that puts Constance’s modernity to the fore. While she defends Tim Delap’s philandering husband, John, in public, she nevertheless turns the tables on him by way of Alex Mugnaioni’s fawning ex suitor Bernard.   We first meet Constance as her mother and sister plan to reveal the discovery of her husband John’s affair with her best friend Marie-Louise, played by Gloria Onitiri. As it turns out in the subsequent flashback, however, Constance knew all along. She just chose to keep it to herself r...

Òran Mór, Glasgow Three stars   Margaret has lost her way. No, not in the geographical sense. The Glasgow gay bar this American émigré of a certain age has just landed in on a rainy Friday night is a place she specifically sought out. For what, though? Comfort? A friendly face? A cheeky cocktail as she bonds with strangers? Sure, Margaret gets all of these and more eventually in Bethany Tennick’s lunchtime mini musical for A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s latest season, but the welcome she initially gets from bar manager Dove isn’t exactly warm.    Even so, Margaret’s lack of direction comes from somewhere else. As a workaholic whose grown up offspring have decamped all the way to Australia, she has an empty spot where some kind of love used to live. Dove, meanwhile, has issues of her own to deal with, some of which may or may not be solved by the contents of the mysterious package her sidekick Si has been despatched to collect. When Si attempts to cast a spell to pur...

The Pavilion, Glasgow Four stars   If ever an unsung Scottish heroine was crying out to be reimagined in a high-end historical drama it is the figure of Flora MacDonald. Here, after all, was a young woman living in eighteenth century Skye who stumbled into the history books after aiding and abetting the Jacobite cause when she helped smuggle Bonnie Prince Charlie out of the reach of government troops after he and his party were trounced at Culloden. Other than a 1948 film and a more recent appearance in an episode of Outlander, alas, Flora has remained an oddly neglected figure.    Cue Belle Jones’ suitably heroic musical romp, which arrives in Glasgow this week to reclaim Flora and give her the due she deserves after opening in Inverness last weekend. Here we see Flora across the decades, with Karen Fishwick embodying the younger woman, while Annie Grace watches over Flora’s place in history with a wizened eye. What follows in Stasi Schaeffer’s big-hearted production for...

Òran Mór, Glasgow Four stars   If we all have our crosses to bear, say a prayer for Alice Lockwood in James Reilly’s new play that makes up the latest incarnation of A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s lunchtime theatre season at Òran Mór. Alice is a primary school teacher in a Catholic school, or was before she was suspended for reasons yet to be made clear. In order to get to the bottom of the incident, Alice has been seconded for a session with ex GP turned secular therapist Dr. Freer. When Father Mackin shows up to hear Alice’s story, truth becomes stranger than fiction.    Alice, you see, has been seeing saints. Fifteen of them have shown up in her classroom, proffering suitably saintly advice, with St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost things and souls, even helping her find a missing ear ring under the fridge. Trouble is, she is the only one who can see her new spirit guides, and the wonderland of ecclesiastical encounters is occupied her alone. Even worse, while ...

King’s Theatre, Glasgow Four stars    When senior public figures publish a warts and all memoir, it is customary for them these days to go on a high profile promotional tour. Some enjoy meeting their public so much that the stars in their eyes get the better of them, and they join the showbiz sleb set, with everything they might have previously achieved lost in the razzmatazz.    So it goes with Scottish Police Chief Commissioner Cameron Miekelson, the hapless breakout star of comic cop mock doc, Scot Squad. As brought to life by veteran comedy auteur Jack Docherty, the Chief, or Cam the Bam, as he is known disaffectionately among what he might call his online community, has penned No Apologies. This tome is based on the befuddled Commissioner’s terminally unreconstructed way of saying the wrong thing on a public platform.    As the title implies, Miekelson manages to bluster his way into an ever-deeper hole with every utterance. This shows off an...

The Pavilion, Glasgow Four stars  When a country celebrates itself, it is a show of confidence and strength. When it does it too much, it’s probably time to worry. As the all singing, all dancing comic troupe delivering Scott Gilmour and Claire McKenzie’s irreverent potted history of Caledonia in song suggests from the off, however, this is Scotland. It does things differently. Most of the time, anyway.  Jemima Levick’s production begins and ends in the toilet, that centre of the universe from whence all manner of human waste is purged. It is also one of Scotland’s many great inventions. Here, this monumental porcelain pan immortalised as something more regal on Kenny Miller’s set manifests itself in the flesh by way of the lanky form of Tyler Collins. Dressed like a giant baseball capped condom in Saltire patterned pants, Collins becomes our host for the evening in a fast moving compendium of selected high and low lights from Scotland’s last 1200 years.   Like Horri...

Òran Mór , Glasgow  Four stars    Poor Joy. Despite her name, she just can’t see the funny side of life. As a terminally single librarian, her world isn’t exactly a barrel of laughs anyway, especially not in the Emilys section, where Ms’s Bronte and Dickinson provide some kind of comfort. This would be one more thing to blame the parents for if they were around. As Joy makes clear when she goes on a date with a wannabe comedian who tests out his new material on her, however, she just doesn’t get the joke. Or any joke, for that matter. This prompts Joy’s date to suggest she desperately seek help, medical or otherwise, in order to try and find her sense of humour.    We know all this because Joy tells all in a glorious monologue by Morna Young that sees Naomi Stirrat embody our heroine in all her specky, tweedy, geeky glory. Presented as a stand-up show, Alex Fthenakis’ production charts Joy’s progress across a series of routines in a comic memoir that uses e...

The Studio, Edinburgh Four stars    Liam Hurley and Jo Mango’s musical meditation on the pains of confinement first appeared in 2024. Its presentation by some of Scotland’s leading songwriters of work created with those in the prison system about to be released showcased a poignant fusion of storytelling and folk infused chamber pop. Two years on, and Hurley and Mango’s production remains a moving and powerful construction that brings dignity and nuance to a difficult subject.    What is effectively a song cycle born out of a series of workshops with prisoners sets up a series of criss-crossing narratives knitted either side of a fairytale about a giant without a heart. This see Louis Abbot of Admiral Fallow play a workshop leader not unlike himself going into prisons, while Mango plays a mediator who writes letters for prisoners inbetween dealing with her own stresses. Kim Grant, aka Raveloe, tells the giant’s tale with an engaging performative largesse. At the show...

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars    Edinburgh has so much to answer for in David Greig’s new stage adaptation of David Nicholls’ novel, just as it has in the book itself, as well as its film and TV adaptations. The city’s influence is there at the start as Emma and Dexter drunkenly fall together on graduation day 1988 in what on Rae Smith’s revolving set looks like a mock-up of the University of Edinburgh’s Teviot House Union long before its recent makeover. It’s there as well in the Rankeillor Street student flatshare on the city’s southside where Emma lives with what turn out to be mates for life. Finally, it’s up there on Arthur’s Seat, where everything sort of begins, and where, twenty years on, and with their lives turned upside down, it will never fully end.   As with its source, Greig’s play charts Emma and Dexter’s parallel lives every St. Swithin’s Day on which they intermittently collide. This comes first as friends, then soulmates, before fate ta...

Theatre Royal, Glasgow Five stars    When worlds collide it changes everything for Susan, the woman on the verge of what used to be called a nervous breakdown in Alan Ayckbourn’s mid 1980s play. The bump on the head she wakes up from at the start of the play after she stepped on a rake in an unseen piece of comedy slapstick has clearly been an accident waiting to happen for some time.    Vicar’s wife Susan is trapped in a loveless marriage with Gerald, who is more concerned with trying to write a history of his parish than he is for his wife. Their would-be rebel son Rick has just left a sect in Hemel Hempstead for a brand new wife, and Gerald’s sister Muriel thinks her long dead husband is talking to her.    Delirium sends Susan down one of Dr. Bill’s rabbit holes, where a parallel universe steps out of the bushes in the shape of a fantasy family. All drop dead gorgeous, they idolise Susan, who has reimagined herself as a best selling historical novelist....

Òran Mór , Glasgow Four stars Lydia gets more than she bargained for when she visits the local duck pond. Armed with a bottle of gin, a broken heart and a deep-set death wish, she intends chucking herself in the water and ending it all. A resident Swan has other ideas, however, and determines to show her a good time. Before long this oddest of couples are flying high on a bender in dodgy nightclubs and taking last trains to London, where Lydia wakes at dawn.    Or at least this is the story Lydia tells at closing time in this lounge bar musical fantasia by writer/director Eve Nicol and composer/lyricist Finn Anderson.  Based on a radio play by David Greig,  this latest edition of A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s lunchtime theatre initiative is a bittersweet tale of everyday emotional survival.    Julia Murray is in fine voice as broken diva Lydia, with Paul McArthur somehow transforming himself from barfly to Swan with just a change of shirt. This ushers in ...

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Three stars   How might a generation of young people judge the failures of their parents to protect the environment? This is the starting point for Dawn King’s play, receiving its Scottish premiere in Joanna Bowman’s production for the Tron. King’s line of inquiry takes us into some dystopian near future, where three adults all deemed culpable in the damage done are judged by a jury of teenagers, with euthanisation the potential end result.   The trio are first world cannon fodder, whose speeches of liberal atonement for taking too many flights, working for dodgy oil companies and probably not putting the right rubbish in the recycling bin probably aren’t going to save them. Certainly not from the twelve angry adolescents tasked here to decide their fate with a mere fifteen minutes to make their mind up.    As the unnamed Defendants, Brian Ferguson, Maryam Hamidi and Pauline Goldsmith speak their monologues from designer Jessica Worrall’s state ...