Coffee-Table Notes

Botanic Gardens, Glasgow Four stars     Blood is very much thicker than water in John Webster’s 17th century Jacobean revenge tragedy, in which a merry widow Duchess marries beneath her station in the form of her steward, Antonio. This is much to the chagrin of her brothers, with her twin Ferdinand and their Cardinal elder using their respective power bases to keep an eye on their sister’s most intimate exchanges through the eyes of their spy, Bosola. As the Duchess and Antonio’s cross class love story evolves into a domestic bliss that should be for life, Webster dismisses any prospect of a happy ending by killing off pretty much everyone in sight.    This is brought home in scintillating close up in Jennifer Dick’s five-actor version for Bard in the Botanics’ silver jubilee season. With assorted pairs of boots laid out at the altars that mark out the space in the Kibble Palace Glasshouse, Dick’s own production sees the Duchess’ passion for Manasa Tagica’s Antonio b...

Botanic Gardens, Glasgow Three stars   When Jane Austen wrote in 1815 of how the heroine of the novel she was about to begin was a woman ‘whom no one but myself will much like’, one might presume she was about to create a monster. As it turned out, and as was established in the book’s first line, Emma Woodhouse turned out to be ‘handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and a happy disposition’. She may have been the sort of beauteous untouchable who breezed through life in a way that leaves the rest of us swooning, but she’s a nice girl, really, even if she is the sort of person for whom the phrase ‘check your privilege’ was invented.   So it goes with Jennifer Dick’s new stage adaptation of Austen’s yarn, which in Gordon Barr’s open air production for this year’s Bard in the Botanics season stays true to its posh frock roots to make for a delightful summer confection.    Esme Bayley’s Emma is a thoroughly modern young woman who burls through the nineteent...

Pitlochry Festival Theatre Three stars    When French poet Jean Cocteau was told of singer Edith Piaf’s death in 1963, he is said to have declared the words ‘I can die too’, and duly had a heart attack in solidarity. This possibly apocryphal yarn concerning such a grand gesture says much about offstage drama, making it an ideal title for this new chamber musical presented by an amalgam of international producers with Pitlochry Festival Theatre.   A vehicle for West End and Broadway star Frances Ruffelle, who wrote it with Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s artistic director Alan Cumming along with Sally George, Ruffelle is Lily, the leading lady of a production of Cocteau’s 1930 play, La voix humaine (The Human Voice). One of the great monologues for women, Cocteau’s solo piece puts its star on the telephone throughout, as her long-term lover prepares to marry a younger model.   As she emerges from a cage-like construction made out of walls of hanging down phones, Lil...

Pitlochry Festival Theatre Four stars   The dustsheets are covering the furniture and the paintings have been taken down in the family home where Lear holds court in Finn Den Hertog’s brutal and bloody version of Shakespeare’s all too human tragedy of power and loss. The chandelier too that will later resemble something between a wrecking ball and a guillotine is all wrapped up as the ageing matriarch indulges a last gasp chance to lord it over her three daughters. As the sisters gather, it looks for all the world like their mother is about to be carted off to what these days might be euphemistically be called a retirement home.    As Lear’s cry for attention seeks only flattery from her offspring, her oldest and middle daughters Goneril and Regan tell her what she wants to hear, and are duly awarded a slice of the queendom as their inheritance. Her youngest, Cordelia, alas, is having none of it. This not only drives Lear mad, but kicks off a full on war, while Cordelia p...

Botanic Garden, Glasgow Four stars   The seven seas are rocking at the start of Bard in the Botanics’ main stage flagship production to mark the stalwarts of outdoor Shakespeare’s silver jubilee year. Once the storm subsides, twins Viola and Sebastian are all washed up on a strange island, with Viola landing in what by way of Heather Grace Currie’s design appears to be the beer garden of the sort of docklands boozer where men are very much men. In the whirligig of dressing up box cosplay that follows, for a while at least, so are some of the women.    While her new pal Feste mainlines feelgood karaoke hits, Viola dons cap and trews like a sailor ashore, attracting the unwarranted attention of all comers. This includes handsome himbo Orsino, who treats his new sidekick like one of the boys, despite the pretty obvious truth staring him in the face.    The boozer’s regulars led by Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek, meanwhile, belie their aristocratic origins ...

King’s Theatre, Glasgow Three stars   Arriving fashionably late is probably to be expected of a turn of the century clique of teen princess throwbacks. This is why  Tuesday night’s twenty minute delay to showtime for Tina Fey’s musical stage version of her 2004 film can be forgiven. Conceptually speaking, such divaish timekeeping is kind of in keeping with the classroom and cafeteria shenanigans new girl Cady lands in at the start of the show, but, y’know, whatevs.    Cady has just jetted in from Kenya, and after a girlhood in the wild, has a lot of catching up to do in terms of making friends. She soon falls in with Janis and Damian, the outsider duo who become Cady’s guide through the social minefield of high school, as well as our narrators. As for who rules the school, cue The Plastics, the drop dead gorgeous trio led by the divine Regina George, who appears to be the ultimate Queen Bee until Cady comes along.  What follows in this UK tour of Casey...

Botanic Garden, Glasgow Four stars   The Union Jack may not be everywhere in Gordon Barr’s new look at Shakespeare’s tragedy of jealousy and deceit, but it certainly makes its presence felt. This is the case whether on the camouflaged shoulders of the men of action who either engineer or become victims of macho power plays, or on the locker room doors where all their inner secrets are kept.   This is the world in which Manasa Tagica’s Othello has made it big, a black migrant success story who leads his men to victory, but who is never quite one of the gang. His marriage to Desdemona, Esme Bayley’s well to do white girl whose parents expected more of her, only serves to ramp up an inherent institutionalised racism even more. This is the thin line that provokes Adam Donaldson’s Iago to manipulate his way to destruction as he feeds misinformation, gossip and rumour to his boss, driving him demented enough to seek revenge of his own while Iago pulls the strings.    Perfo...

Theatre Royal, Glasgow Three stars    Life is one great big cabaret for Allegra, the woman of a certain age cast as the life and soul of Peter Quilter’s play. Allegra may live on her own, but her world is full of colour, as well as occasional song. The latter is something the shopkeepers of her village know only too well, used as they are to being serenaded by showtunes on any given afternoon whenever Allegra graces their premises.    Dotty eccentric she may be, but Allegra’s fondness for doing a number concerns her brother Ronan enough to bring in Czech cleaner Anna to keep her company. And when Officer Rogers from the local nick turns up at the door, the game would appear to be up. If only they all knew where she left her umpteen bottles of pills, everyone could have a quiet life.    As pro Palestine supporters gathered outside the Theatre Royal prior to the show to protest its star Maureen Lipman's appearance following attempts to cancel its Aberdeen run...

The Playhouse, Edinburgh Four stars   As gossipy Magic Circle members might tell you, Derren Brown’s feats of mental skulduggery he bamboozles his fan base with aren’t anything new. Brown himself admits in the second half of his latest theatrical extravaganza that the hardest thing for him to do during his two and a half hour performance is to keep an eye on a deck of cards to see which way one lands. The fact that he tells us this via subtitles on a screen that covers the Playhouse stage’s entire back wall while those cards are shuffled speaks volumes about Brown’s exemplary shtick. And while those self same Magic Circle members may be correct in their professional observations, if they ever let slip how Brown’s tricks actually worked, chances are such a breach of protocol would see us all have to do a disappearing act.    Things begin quietly enough with pre show phone footage testimonies from a stream of satisfied but bewildered customers about how Brown appears t...

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh  Four stars   In the city there are eight million stories. Edinburgh being Edinburgh, it would probably like to boast it has a fair few more. Given the Athens of the North’s Jekyll and Hyde style credentials, whereby it puts on a pretty facade for the tourists, while the real tall tales emerge from more intimate exchanges out of sight behind closed doors, this might well be the case.    So it goes with Lyceum at Home, an initiative spearheaded by the capital theatre’s artistic director James Brining, who commissioned four writers to create a quartet of thirty-minute monologues. With each set in Edinburgh, in a project led by outgoing associate director Zinnie Harris, these were then performed around town in people’s living rooms, where sofa bound audiences were unavoidably up close to the action. Now the mini tour is over, the quartet of new works were brought back home to the theatre that sired them, where they were performed on the s...

Pitlochry Festival Theatre Four stars    Electricity is in the air when Robin meets Iris at a 1990s student party for her 21st birthday. As opposites attract, the pair find common ground of sorts over a broken guitar displayed like a trophy. What might have ended up as one night of drunken passion becomes something else when the pair make a vow never to touch.    Thirty years later, and what was an unforgettable moment for him and one more rash promise for her brings Robin and Iris together once more. As their worlds collide in a courtroom cafe where both are involved in the consequences of actions not of their making, their criss-crossing lives catch up with each other across generations and wake up something in both of them.   What initially looks like an extended episode of what might be styled as This Mid Life in the first act of Douglas Maxwell’s emotionally ambitious play gradually evolves into something more expansively contemporary in the second.  R...

Òran Mór, Glasgow Three stars   Hear ye this. When a town crier and a court jester gather as one for the pleasure of the king, soothsaying and hilarity will ensue. Or sometimes not. Such is the way in Nay Dhanak’s mini epic, the latest comic extravaganza to grace A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s current lunchtime theatre season. Here we find our ad hoc double act both out of a job, and reduced to telling their respective stories with a little help from some life size puppets and framed as a comedy masterclass.    As they ply their past their sell by date wares with a stream of verbiage and well worn gags, the duo’s slapstick interplay becomes part of a mediaeval quest in search of a second sun to offset the unfortunate eclipse back home. Instead they find themselves thrown into the future, where the news is relayed in a million different hi-tech ways, punchlines are ten a penny, dragons aren’t so easily slain and Siri has an answer for everything.    Dhanak ...

Citizens Theatre, Glasgow Five stars   The vintage microphone that hangs down centre stage may be designed for old school crooners in Linda McLean’s adaptation of Denise Mina’s true crime novel, but as it swings between those confessing not quite all, those behind it tell a far darker story.    It is 1958, and in a world where gangsterism and civic entrepreneurism rub shoulders in spit and sawdust bars and after-hours members clubs, William Watt has been released from prison after being tried for the murder of his wife, daughter and sister-in-law. Determined to clear his name, the Lanarkshire businessman ends up on a twelve-hour bender with Peter Manuel, who will later be convicted and hanged for these and other killings.    Over two intense hours, Mina’s story flits between the trial and a speculative dramatisation of what may or may not have happened during Watt and Manuel’s epic session. The result in Dominic Hill’s main stage production is a slow burnin...

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Four stars    Love hurts in D.C. Jackson’s potty-mouthed sitcom writ large. This is something to do with the succession of studiedly adolescent one-line gags peppered throughout as much as the growing pains of impending adulthood, not to mention the hangovers that go with both. Either way, it’s complicated.    This is how it rolls for Tom and Amy, the terminally feckless thirty something duo whose drunken one-night office amour helps stave off grown up responsibilities. Until, that is, they have no choice. Inbetween, Jackson has his sort of happy couple rewind on assorted teenage romances that left their mark like a bad home made tattoo. With Tom and Amy’s messy story told by each in turn as they narrate their own unreliable memoirs, we get to see their warts and all destiny from all sides until they become entwined forever.    Johnny McKnight’s revival of Jackson’s 2010 mini series in waiting stays true to its overriding ridiculousnes...

Òran Mór, Glasgow Four stars   Don’t mess with the Hens in Debbie Hannan’s new play, the latest lunchtime epic to grace A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s current season. As Jade, Amber and Lilac gather for their best pal Coral’s weekend extravaganza, they are already a force to be reckoned with. Once Coral’s so called cousin and unexpected guest Luna checks in with the WhatsApp group, however, by the end of their 48 Hours of regimented fun in the Athens of the North, they will have become goddesses.    This is brought to mercurial life by three of the finest female acting talents of their generation, with Danni Heron as Jade, Laura Lovemore as Lilac and Anna Russell-Martin as Amber joining forces as a chorus to end them all on Heather Grace Currie’s celestial looking set. As the trio double up as Coral and Luna in this co-production with Assembly Roxy in Edinburgh, the level of female energy on show goes stratospheric in its mix of ancient...

Òran Mór, Glasgow Four stars   As Scotland’s latest World Cup hopes come into view over the next few weeks, Joe McCann’s debut play is a timely look at one of the country’s lesser-spotted footballing greats. Back in the nineteenth century, Andrew Watson arrived in the UK from Demerara, British Guiana, the mixed race son of a wealthy sugar plantation owner father and a Guianese mother. While at university in Glasgow, Watson discovered football, and went on to become the first black player in association football at international level, who became star striker and captain of Queen’s Park. Watson also captained Scotland’s national team in three games that saw them hammer England twice, with the first game, a 6-1 victory for Watson’s team, remaining a record home defeat for England.   This is more than enough to get the faithful rallying behind Watson in McCann’s play, performed with heart by a solo Dayton Mungai, who begins with a question to the audience. Several others fol...

Theatre Royal, Glasgow Three stars    Relocation, relocation, relocation is the order of the day in this new stage adaptation of Barbet Schroeder’s 1992 schlocky horror psycho-sexual thriller. Drawn from John Lutz’s novel from two years earlier, SWF Seeks Same, the story imagines what happens when a woman’s new flatmate turn out to be mad, bad and very dangerous to know.    Moving house is not only theprime drive for Lisa Faulkner’s Allie as she and her teenage daughter Bella move into a building with seriously shonky electrics after Allie finally ditches Bella’s feckless dad, Sam. Nor is it just about Allie’s new lodger, Hedy, played by Kym Marsh as a Yorkshire sired cuckoo in the nest.    Writer Rebecca Reid has taken the steamy stateside des-res of the film and moved it lock, stock and homicidal kitchen knife to what appears to be a collapsing British suburban tower block. Not only that, Reid has whooshed things forward a few decades from the angsty and ...

Pitlochry Festival Theatre Four stars   You know the craic. You step into a late night music bar, the joint is jumping, and you walk out with your life turned upside down. Or at least this is what happens to the Dublin troubadour at the heart of Enda Walsh’s musical stage version of John Carney’s hit big screen romance. The catalyst for this wake up call is a turbo charged Czech pianist who tunes into his sad eyed laments and decrees they make an album together. Rounding up a group of misfits Commitments style, an all night burst of creativity sees them set down a classic before everything has to change once more.   As those who have seen either the film or John Tiffany’s Tony award winning Broadway production will already know, beyond the pair’s obvious chemistry, it’s complicated. For one unrepeatable moment, however, the international language of music and the emotional sparks that fly from it are the only things that matter.    As an opening gambit for Alan Cummi...

Dundee Rep Four stars   When Willy Russell's Pygmalion like tale of a working class hairdresser’s getting of wisdom by way of an Open University literature course run by a pickled ex poet first appeared in 1980, social mobility and education for all was still a possibility. If set today, lecturer Frank would have long been made redundant, while Rita’s thirst for knowledge would likely have been thwarted by fees that would have left her in debt forever. More recently, Rita’s spirit has been brought bang up to date in Jade Franks’ Edinburgh Festival Fringe hit, Eat the Rich (but maybe not me mates x), and it is only a matter of time before Franks slips into Rita’s scuffed shoes and plays her dramatic ancestor for real.    In the meantime, we should be grateful for this latest incarnation of what is now a period piece that remains a glorious riff on the old adage of how a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, be it for better or worse. Debbie Hannan’s production sees Frank ...

Òran Mór, Glasgow Three stars   When two lesbian bikers of a certain age walk into an island bar, it’s no joke for teenage Ruari in Ryan Hay’s new play for A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s ongoing lunchtime theatre season. Helen and Jane have been around the block together, a high-speed double act of Harley Davidsons, leather jackets and war stories about seeing Joan Jett and the Runaways at Glasgow Apollo. Things are changing, however, not least for Ruari, who runs the bar in their dad’s seemingly permanent absence, and is doing a lot of growing up beyond serving whisky after hours.    There is a lot going on in Hay’s play, set over three years when Helen and Jane drop in to the bar for weekend breaks. While much is left unsaid, the late night debates that eventually cut loose sound at points like textbook guides to dealing with the growing pains of becoming who you want to be.    Caitlin Skinner’s low-key slow burn of a production brings this rites of passage p...