Coffee-Table Notes

Theatre Royal, Glasgow Three stars A shot in the dark and the shrill scream that begin J.B. Priestley's philosophical thriller don't tell the full story of something possessed with the airs and graces of a hokey drawing-room whodunnit, but which ends up as a tortured treatise on human nature's power to deceive. These attention-grabbing noises off are themselves a theatrical double bluff, as they open out onto a post dinner party scene where the ladies of the extended Caplan clan are making small talk. A cigarette box seems to carry more weight than anyone is letting on, and only when the gentlemen enter does revelation upon revelation pile up alongside the much missed figure of the late Martin Caplan. Martin was the social glue and a whole lot more besides of a publishing set steeped in the well turned out veneer of its own fiction. Sex, drugs, love and money are all in the mix, be it straight, gay, between husbands, wives and other part-time lovers. If only they'd mana...

When the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow announced earlier this year that the centrepiece of the theatre's  seventieth anniversary Spring season in 2015 would be a new production of John Byrne's play, The Slab Boys, it confirmed excited whispers which had been circulating for some time. The Slab Boys, after all, has become a bona fide modern classic since it premiered at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh in 1978. The fact that it will be directed by David Hayman, who had directed the original production of the play that redefined Scottish theatre thirty-six years ago gave the news an extra frisson. After blazing a trail as part of the legendary 1970s Citz ensemble, The Slab Boys will be Hayman's second return to his theatrical alma mater under its current artistic director Dominic Hill's tenure, following his barn-storming turn in the title role of Hill's production of King Lear. Today's exclusive announcement in the Herald confirms that the remainder of the Citz...

Paisley Arts Centre Four stars When self-absorbed actor Miles turns up at an isolated farmhouse in search of a story, he gets more than he bargained for when he's taken in by Morgan and Angus who live there.  Both Second World War veterans, these life-long friends play out their lives in early 1970s Ontario, working the land as they keep old and uncomfortable memories at bay. Miles' arrival awakens something in a damaged Angus that can't be placated anymore by baking bread, counting stars and listening to Morgan's possibly unreliable tales of how they got to where they are. Inspired by real-life events that led to The Farm Show, a defining moment in Canadian theatre,  Michael Healey's 1999 play taps into a rich seam of dramatic and social history even as it pokes fun at the try-too-hard earnestness that springs from Miles and his big city ways. Out of this comes a tender meditation on how stories can enlighten even the most shattered minds. Alasdair McCrone's to...

Dundee Rep Four stars Ever feel like you've been cheated? John Lydon's famous phrase springs to mind in Selma Dimitrijevic's production of her new version of Gogol's nineteenth century comedy, penned here with Mikhail Durnenkov. This isn't just because of the Sex Pistols t-shirt sported by one of the key players in the elaborate sting that follows from an unholy alliance between con-men. It is the way too that Dimitrijevic and her all-female ensemble play with artifice and gender in a way that itself is a stylistic gamble. Yet, as each character enters the locker-room to play macho games, it pays dividends even as the gang hustle their victim into suspending their own disbelief. Initially nothing is hidden in this co-production between Greyscale and Dundee Rep Ensemble in association with Northern Stage and Stellar Quines. Once the sextet of players have put on charity shop suits and waistcoats, they pick up instruments to become a junkyard dance-band before a playg...

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars Five women emerge from the blackness of Jamie Vartan's panoramic staging at the start of Lu Kemp's revival of Sue Glover's 1991 play, each dragging a wooden crate attached to a rope behind them. Resembling a quintet of Mother Courages, this is just one of many powerful images in Glover's brutal and unsentimental study of life across the seasons for six women working the land  in nineteenth century rural Scotland. Hired by the gentry and paid a pittance, youngsters Liza and Jenny line up alongside Sara and her teenage daughter Tottie. Maggie works alongside them inbetween tending to her bairns, while ex Bondager Ellen occasionally loosens her corset and comes down from the big house she married into. All have yearnings, be it for Canada or a local farm-hand, and when work turns to play, Tottie's tragedy is inevitable. After more than a decade without a production on home soil, one of the most striking things about Bondagers ...

Stills, Edinburgh until Sunday. Four stars While the welter of artistic contributions to the one hundred year anniversary of the First World War's opening salvo have been resolutely non-triumphalist, recent events in Palestine and what looks set to be Iraq Part Three suggest little has been learnt in the intervening century. As Remembrance Day looms, this is where this dense and at times overwhelming compendium of war in pieces curated by artist Owen Logan and Kirsten Lloyd of Stills comes in. A sequel of sorts to Logan and Lloyd's previous collaboration on the epic ECONOMY project, which looked at global capitalism in a similarly polemical fashion, the starting point of The King's Peace is selections from Masquerade: Michael Jackson Alive in Nigeria (2001-2005). Logan's satirical photo-essay sees him pick up the mantle – and the white mask – of the late pop icon and travels to Africa, where his mysterious collaborators the Maverick Ejiogbe Twins subsequently p...

Little Theatre, Dundee Four stars A quartet of rarely-seen short plays by Tennessee Williams isn't the obvious choice for Dundee Rep Ensemble's fifth annual tour of the city's community venues. In director Irene Macdougall's hands, however, Williams' sad little studies of little lives in everyday crisis are revealed to be as rich in poetry and poignancy as his tempestuous full-length works. Opening with the compendium's title piece, the self-destructive urges of the play's damaged young couple played by Thomas Cotran and Millie Turner are captured in a series of desperate exchanges that sees them finally cling to each other for comfort. Like them, all of Williams' characters create elaborate fictions for themselves in order to survive the madness of the world beyond the bare floorboards and shabby rooms of Leila Kalbassi's set. Punctuated by a melancholy piano score, the plays contain a contemporary currency too that speaks variously about art, addic...