Coffee-Table Notes

Leith Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars To suggest that the Hidden Door festival that filled every inch of a reinvigorated Leith Theatre took a breather following its opening weekend wig-out would be something of an over-statement. It did, however, get the cabaret tables out for some less full-on live fare, that allowed for a Sunday come-down before moving gently into week-day activities. The flag-ship of this was Blistering Mischief, a night of poetry and song presented by Flint and Pitch. This is the new spoken-word and music night founded by poet Jenny Lindsay, formerly one half of the similarly styled Rally and Broad team with Rachel McCrum, who is now domiciled in Canada. Neu! Reekie!'s Michael Pedersen talked about sex and wild-life. Dominic Waxing Lyrical sang a folk-tinged homage of sorts to Susan Sontag. Heir of the Cursed cooed mournful lullabys like a new age Singing Nun, and A New International played waltz-time chansons. It was Ellen Renton's powerful perform...

Citizens Theatre, Glasgow Five stars Things are swinging down at the Club of the Unloved in the Cornwall based Kneehigh company's audacious pop-tastic reworking of the oldest love story in the world. The balloons are out and a chorus of balaclava and cagoule clad 'love-spotters' are trying out their chat up lines in vain. The music comes from a retro-styled record player at the front of the stage and a junkyard house band that plays all the heart-breakers and more. When a gang of hard-men are kicked into touch, French-speaking Tristan goes on a cruise to Ireland to bring back the ring-leader's sister Yseult for the ruling King Mark. Under the influence of a heady brew, Tristan and Yseult fall head over heels, as is related by Kirsty Woodward's Jackie Kennedy-alike narrator, Whitehands. Inevitable tragedy ensues, but not before a melee of slapstick inspired routines explodes into riotous life. In Emma Rice's circus-styled revival of a production first...

Leith Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars "How does it end?" are the first and last words spoken by playwright and poet Rebecca Sharp in this spectral collaboration with composer Philip Jeck, that fuses storytelling and projections with Jeck's electronically generated soundscape. The pair's contribution to this year's Hidden Door festival charts the fantastical flight of Mary Christie, a young Girl in a red jumper who runs away from a fire and goes deep into the darkness, both of the city and her own psyche. It begins with the seeming innocence of a music box melody and projections of what turns out to be a 60 watt bulb. As Sharp's live words are punctuated and overlaid with recordings of her voice, her initially fractured poetry is given a more linear narrative pulse as we follow Mary into the night. Along the way, there are stolen cars, cracked electronics and images of a luminous blue night sky that lend an eerie urgency to an increasingly dream-like afte...

Andrew Panton was at his new desk at Dundee Rep by 7am last Thursday morning. Given his recent appointment as artistic director of the Tayside theatre, such enthusiasm is understandable, especially as Panton was putting the final touches to his first season, which was announced at an event at the theatre on Saturday night. Outside the window of Panton's office, an industrial cherry-picker was already at work, with those inside the vehicle taking down the lettering on the wall beside the entrance to the theatre. By now, a new set of letters will have been unveiled as a symbolic pre-cursor to Saturday's announcement that marks a new chapter in Dundee Rep's history. “It's suddenly made everything feel very real,” says Fife-born Panton, as each letter is removed while the sun shines. “There's going to be a whole new branding, and a new logo, so the whole theatre will look and feel a little bit different. Watching the old branding being taken down is making all of...

Leith Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars The sun may have shone on Leith this weekend, but inside Leith Theatre, the stars were looking down on the first swathe of artistic interventions this shamefully neglected building has seen for a quarter of a century. Those stars may have been projected, but they gave a sheen of cosmic glamour to a reinvigorated space that is the sort of large-scale civic hall the capital has been crying out for. Beyond the main auditorium, all manner of performances, film screenings and interventions took hold, from beneath the main stage right up to the makeshift galleries on the roof of the building. Things began early on Friday night, with the theatre's upstairs balcony playing host to Heroines, Charlotte Hastings' three-woman cut-up of speeches by female icons of Greek tragedy. The entire auditorium was utilised by The Mash Collective, a grey-clad ensemble who tapped into Leith Theatre's history with a series of dance routines. In one of the ...

The Mash House, Edinburgh Sunday May 21st An old Japanese man in a blue t-shirt stands on a dimly lit stage clutching a microphone stand as if his life depended on it. Diminutive in stature and ascetic in appearance, the man babbles into the microphone with transcendent intent. Damo Suzuki has done this a million times before, and over the next fifty minutes loses himself inside his performance once more. As his straggly silver hair snakes across his face, his voice rises and falls, one minute a high-pitched mantra, the next a wordless gurgle. In the gloom behind him, an ad hoc band carve out a slow-burning backdrop. It begins with bowed guitar, adding percussive flourishes and bass and keyboard patterns that steadily flesh out to become a complementary pulsebeat to the incantations they accompany. Suzuki first carved out his niche with Can, the German kosmische hippy classicists he joined after being spotted busking on the streets of Munich in 1970 by the band's bass player H...

Somewhere in the midst of the 1980s/1990s indie-pop goldrush, amongst the Baggy casualties and shoegaze superstars, there were a million others of equal merit who fell by the wayside, plagued by bad luck, bad timing or both. Come on down Hugh Duggie and Ian White, who, as Sons of the Descent, are the waggish brains behind this low-key smorgasbord of quietly crafted off-kilter pop gems. Given their respective backgrounds, it was inevitable that Duggie and White would eventually find each other. Duggie served time in late period Lowlife, the band formed by ex Cocteau Twins bassist Will Heggie, before going on to front Mute Records-connected noiseniks, Foil. White, meanwhile, played guitar with Edinburgh band The Wendys, who were signed to Factory Records not long before the late Tony Wilson's musical plaything/utopian folly crashed and burned into financial ignominy, a glorious victim of its own largesse. The result of the pair's collective pedigree is a suitably wacked-out coll...