Coffee-Table Notes

Discover 21, Edinburgh Three stars If the revolution starts at closing time, few took advantage of the licensing laws more than Karl Marx himself. Or at least that's how the inventor of orthodox radical thought as we know it is presented in Ben Blow's scurrilous little play, first seen on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe earlier this year. Blow's play is now one of the first shows to play in the much needed thirty-five seat Discover 21 space, situated in the equally necessary Arts Complex initiative that exists inside St Margaret's House, a 1960s office block. Here, Marx is a randy old goat living it up in nineteenth century Manchester, with a much put-upon Engels footing the bill for all his excesses while being bullied into doing most of the graft on The Communist Manifesto. With much of the necessary first-hand knowledge of the lumpen proletariat provided by Marx's favourite prostitute, Molly, the absurd double act of Charlie (Marx) and Freddy (Engels) emb...

Theatre Royal, Glasgow Three stars When Hull was named last week as UK City of Culture for 2017 ahead of an already flourishing Dundee, one suspects a secret weapon called John Godber may have had much to do with it. Few playwrights, after all, have celebrated the mores and aspirations of ordinary Yorkshire folk with such a populist flourish than Godber, who, as artistic director of Hull Truck Theatre, put the city it called home on the map from the 1980s onwards. It's interesting, therefore, to see Godber revisit this early work, in which he takes a gentle look at the lives and times of Jack and Liz, an elderly couple whose relationship has been mapped out by their annual off-peak holiday to Blackpool. Based on Godber's own grand-parents, the play sees the pair rewind their way back to their newly-wed days. Their world may be coloured by dodgy B & Bs, fortune tellers and funfair rides, but there's a simmering uncertainty about where they're heading. A...

When playwright and film star Sam Shepard appeared on the stage of the Citizens Theatre following the final performance of the Gorbals-based emporium's production of Shepard's 1980 play, True West, it was a fitting close to the theatre's winter season prior to the opening of its Christmas show, The Jungle Book, this weekend. Here, after all, was a latter-day Hollywood legend with counter-cultural credentials. If ever there was an artist who encapsulated the Citz's own schizophrenic history of classical glamour with an edge, Shepard was it. “It created a real buzz,” says Citizens artistic director, Dominic Hill. “It's exactly what the Citz should be about. For us, it's about saying that, yes, we're in Glasgow, and, yes, we're in the Gorbals, but as well as being local, we've also got an international outlook , and an aspiration to continue that international outlook which the theatre's always had.” Following a season that also saw Chri...

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Three stars It's the men's voices you hear first in Siobhan Nicholas' new play that charts the parallel universes of eighteenth century singer turned astronomer Caroline Herschel and a twenty-first century counterpart investigating her life. They're the voices of men who've seen stars, been to the moon and lived to tell the tale. It's women like Herschel, however, who broke the glass ceiling that allowed those men to conquer worlds beyond. The production by Brighton-based company, Take the Space, in association with Hove's The Old Market (TOM) venue and Greenwich Theatre sets its sights from the start, as Jessica and her classical musician husband Bill look to the skies for guidance. He's been offered a two year gig in Germany, and expects Jess to go with him. She has plans of her own, however, most of which involve a fascination with Herschel that sees her take up residence in the museum that was once the house her ...

To say that Norman Bowman is excited is something of an understatement. As the Arbroath born actor and musical theatre star prepares to open in Michael Grandage's new production of Shakespeare's Henry V featuring Jude Law in the title role, Bowman can barely contain himself. He may only be doubling up in the relatively small parts of soldiers on opposing sides, Nym and Williams, but, after a career playing in number one tours of Grease and West Side Story, where he played the lead roles of Danny Zucko and ex gang member Tony, doing Henry V is clearly the biggest thrill in the world. “I love Shakespeare,” Bowman enthuses, “and with this job I've landed on my feet. It's one of the best companies, the best director and a fantastic lead actor, so it's fantastic. Actors very often do jobs out of necessity rather than desire, but this is a labour of love.” Bowman was cast in Henry V after Grandage saw Bowman playing Ross in Kenneth Branagh's Manchester Inte...

Four stars Of all the paeans to the late Lou Reed in the last couple of weeks, one of the most touching was a poem by Paul Haig ( http://www.paulhaig-rhythmoflife.com/post/65335307611/words-for-lou-reed ), whose old band, the Reed/Velvet Underground/Chic-inspired Josef K, have proved so influential on the likes of Franz Ferdinand and others since their brief existence in the very early 1980s. To see such a private artist acknowledge a musical debt like this was surprising too. Like Reed, beyond some mid-80s major label hiccups, Haig has done things on his own terms. Where it would have been easy to go down the revivalist route and reform Josef K, apart from a handful of live shows a couple of years ago, Haig has kept studiously out of view, ploughing his own wilfully individualistic and largely electronic furrow. There won't be many aware that this fourteen-track collection of skewed, beat-based electro-melodrama released, as many that preceded it, on his own tellingl...

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars There's a greyness looming over Dawn King's new play, a co-production between Out of Joint, the Bush Theatre and Exeter Northcott Theatre. It's not just the clean-lined hue of of the screens that move across the stage to reveal each brief scene. Nor is it the chicly utilitarian desk and chair that double up as assorted interview rooms, hotel bedrooms and artist's studio. Rather, in King's dramatic investigation into the mysterious death of a young female Secret Service agent, it's something about the humdrum mundanity of undercover lives and the over-riding loneliness of the long-distance double agent that gives the play its inscrutable pallor. It opens with Justine being interviewed by Sunita for a job as a spy. As she moves quickly through the ranks, Justine's blankness becomes an asset, as terrorist plots are uncovered and enemy agencies infiltrated. Only when she becomes emotionally involved, both in her w...