Coffee-Table Notes

4 stars The Sound of Young Scotland continuum runs on apace with plenty of bounce on this debut mini album by a quartet led by former Bricolage and some-time Sexual Object Graham Wann. Instrumental jangularity abounds, but so does a dance-floor glam joie de vivre that's as infectious as it is deliciously calculated. Nouveau serious fun starts here. The List, April 2013 ends

3 stars Former uncle John and Whitelock stalwart David Philp is the crooning mastermind behind this seven song set of post-modern Palm Court swing awash with fiddle, accordion and acoustic guitar, which sounds at times not unlike The Monochrome Set gone retro zydeco. As wryly jaunty as all this sounds, there's a doleful melancholy to Philp's delivery, which nevertheless retains a trad warmth worth waltzing to. The List, April 2013 ends

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh 3 stars Secrets, lies and scandal are at the heart of Zinnie Harris' Edwardian update of Henrik Ibsen's proto-feminist classic, directed here by Graham McLaren for this National Theatre of Scotland/Royal Lyceum co-production. By setting this tale of one woman's emancipation from the male world that controls her among the political classes, Harris gives an even sharper edge to the public consequences of private actions. Amy Manson's Nora is here the trophy wife of Thomas Vaughan, a newly appointed cabinet minister who Nora nursed through a six month depression. As the pair move into the house that comes with Thomas' job, Nora is haunted by the figure of Neil Kelman, Thomas' predecessor, who left his post under a cloud, and who illegally loaned Nora money to survive during Thomas' illness. As Nora spends much of the play trying to keep the truth from Thomas, it's clear that she is no little girl, but an intelligen

CCA, Glasgow, until May 18th 2013 3 stars Anthropological detritus forms the bulk of this new body of work by Mexican artist Deball, which was co-commissioned by Cove Park and the Chisenhale Gallery in London, where it transfers later in the year. Deball's starting point is the work of explorer and archaeologist Alfred Maudslay, who learnt how to make paper moulds of ancient sculptures while on an expedition in 1881 in Guatamala; artist Eduardo Paolozzi and anthropologist Alfred Gell, Debell herself excavates the trio's work to make a series of papier mache sculptures based on the templates the three set down. Taken out of the forest and into a gallery space, there's a monumental state of grace imbued into each dried-up artefact that's part homage, part re-appropriation to give an eerie sense of isolated and undiscovered worlds. Set against a series of archive images of the original casts, traps and other artefacts that inspired this show, there's a

GoMA, Glasgow, until May 27th 2013 3 stars When GoMa's soon to be outgoing associate artist Rachel Mimiec led workshops with children at the Red Road Family Centre Nursery, her own line of inquiry with blocks of colour led to a body of work that sees pages from issues of National Geographic daubed, splodged or scribbled over. There's little to distinguish between the children's paintings and Mimiec's own work in terms of style and substance in this three-room installation. Which, for a show that looks at collective creative action, is how it should be. Landscape and nature are paramount to the experience, especially with the inclusion of Horatio McCulloch's 1866 landscape painting, Loch Moree, crucially hung upside down. It's a topsy-turvy cock-a-snook to the subject's more formal representations that comes from a sense of fun more than subversion. Yet it's the intimacy of the printed matter that resonates most in a show that blurs the boun

The Modern Institute, 3 Aird's Lane, Glasgow, until June 15th 2013 4 stars Three film-works by Los Angeles-based provocateur Jones take notions of power drawn from archive documentary footage, then, by recontextualising each one via collaging, cut-ups and other treatments, liberates them from their authoritarian origins. 'Shoot Don't Shoot' (2012) draws from out-dated police training footage designed to educate trigger-happy boys in blue when to fire at a suspect. As a hip-looking black dude walks down the street, the stentorian voice-over sounds straight out of 1960s TV cop show, Dragnet. Both speak volumes about how institutions function. With two scenarios edited together, the non-linear result looks like cops and robbers as done by Godard. There are more dual images in 'Bay of Pigs' (2012), which features split screen footage of US fighter planes bombing Cuba in the 1961 failed invasion taken from the 1974 film, 'Giron.' This makes the

Kings Theatre, Edinburgh 4 stars It's perhaps telling that Scotland's capital is hosting the only mainland UK dates for Adrian Dunbar's vivid touring revival of Brian Friel's 1980 masterpiece, staged as part of Derry/Londonderry's UK City of Culture programme. Here, after all, is a play that speaks eloquently and passionately about the very human consequences of cultural colonialism by a ruling elite. In this week of grand gestures, it couldn't be more pertinent. Friel sets out his store in nineteenth century Donegal, where the rural community are educated at a hedge school, a form of unlegislated shared learning for all. Into this steps the British Army, who have been tasked with translating the local place names from Irish Gaelic to the King's English. What is dressed up as aspirational opportunity soon turns to siege mentality, as the locals are first patronised, then, following the disappearance of a lovesick young lieutenant, brutalised by oc