Coffee-Table Notes

King's Theatre, Edinburgh, August 24 th You took an actual key from a bowl on the way into the final night of Jarvis Cocker and Chilly Gonzales' musical and dramatic peek into the lives and times of Hollywood's iconic Chateau Marmont Hotel. Everyone was welcome. There were plenty to go round. Already immortalised on record in 2016, Room 29's doors were opened up once more for this Edinburgh International Festival three night stand of a stripped down song-cycle, upgraded here to a stage with a double bed on one side, and a baby grand piano on the other. A screen behind showed footage of some of Chateau Marmont's most famous residents who have passed through its portals, including Cocker himself. Over two hours, Cocker, Gonzales and assorted guests transformed a solitary experience into the sort of floor-show cabaret one might more readily expect to find in the ballroom of an establishment as grand as the Marmont. Both our hosts’ natural penchant for showmanshi...

How do we Slay The Dragon of Profit, Private Ownership and Corporate Greed? was an Edinburgh Art Festival Event that took place at the Anatomy Lecture Theatre, University of Edinburgh on Saturday August 12th 2017 from 4pm to 5.30pm. At the start of the event, a 10 minute edit of the film, The Dragon of Profit and Private Ownership, documenting By leaves we live...not by the jingling of our coins, was screened. By leaves we live... was Zoe Walker and Neil Bromwich's quasi mediaeval procession along Edinburgh's Royal Mile, which took place on July 27th 2017 as part of Edinburgh Art Festival. 1. Good afternoon and welcome to Walker and Bromwich's event - How do we slay The Dragon of Profit, Private Ownership and Corporate Greed?, which forms part of Edinburgh Art Festival's Events programme. My name is Neil Cooper, and I'm a writer and critic, and in a moment I'll introduce you to the panellists today, but first let me give you an idea of what's going t...

Ross Theatre and Princes Street Gardens Five stars Edinburgh International Festival may have been celebrating its 70th anniversary with a bang this year, but it ended with a first, as the Fireworks Concert preceded its grand finale with a curtain-raiser that threatened to upstage it. Focusing on traditional Scottish folk music, the first half began with a quartet of rousing widescreen dances by Malcolm Arnold. Played with a brio and lightness of touch by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra as conducted by Clark Rundell, the infectious bounce and lush romance of the tunes wouldn't have sounded out of place in a panoramic western. The appearance of Capercaillie vocalist Karen Matheson was similarly inspiring, as she performed a version of At the Heart of it All, the Sorley MacLean inspired title song from the band's thirtieth anniversary album. The orchestral arrangement by band co-founder Donald Shaw added depth and breadth to the composition, as it did to the Gaelic waulking ...

Dundee Rep's new artistic director Andrew Panton wasn't overly keen on seeing the Chicago-based Steppenwolf Theatre Company's original production of Tracy Letts' new play a decade ago. Panton was just off a long haul flight, and the prospect of committing to the three hour dissection of a dysfunctional family in America's Oklahoma set heartland that was August: Osage County wasn't top of the list for a man with jet lag. This was despite the fact that Letts had an impeccable back catalogue of work ever since he first made his mark in 1993 with Killer Joe. “I didn't know what I was going to see,” says Panton. “A friend had bought me a ticket, and said it was a good meaty three-act play, which being just off a flight was the last thing I wanted to see, but ended up having a great time. The story is fantastic, and you couldn't envisage where it was going to go next. One of the most important things about it was the ensemble acting. Playing a family is one...

King's Theatre Four stars The idealised Edinburgh skyline that formed the back-drop to this Edinburgh International Festival edition of the rolling compendium of readings from celebrated bon mots down the centuries was an all too fitting image. Edinburgh, as head of Canongate Books Jamie Byng pointed out in his introduction, was UNESCO's first city of literature, and those steeped in its bookish heritage understand what words are worth more than many. This is one of the reasons why the proceeds of the night were being donated to the Craigmillar Literary Trust and the Scottish Book Trust, both fine organisations that literally spread the word at every level. It was a soulful version of Nick Cave's song, Love Letter, performed by Kelvin Jones, that opened a night that focused on standing up to intolerance by way of hand-me-down wisdom. Louise Brealey read Laura Dern's letter to her twelve year old daughter, while Clint Dyer presented James Baldwin's 1963 miss...

Scary monsters and super creeps may have been in abundance on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe over the last month, but few looked like Sasquatch, the mythical man-beast brought to life as part of Summerhall's programme by Faith No More keyboardist Roddy Bottum in Sasquatch, The Opera. In what looked like a scaled down hour-long chamber version of Bottum's vision, the now completed run of Ahmed Ibrahim's production cast the forest-dwelling creature as a would-be tourist attraction exploited by a family of drug-addicted hillbillies who dress up their son as a cut-price version who never quite cuts it. When the family fall out and go their separate ways, the daughter of the family encounters the real thing, only for their budding amour to be nipped in the bud by a crazed pack of meth lab workers. While the daughter is reinstated into the so-called normal world once more, Sasquatch is left to run wild, free and ever so slightly sad. If the narrative sounds crazed, be sure tha...

Now that everyone with a laptop is a critic just as professional reviewing is under threat, it's all too timely for the critics themselves to be critiqued. This is the rude intention of Wild Bore , a manic hatchet job by Zoe Coombs Marr, Ursula Martinez and Adrienne Truscott. These three (dis) graces of comic performance take a very public revenge on those who dissed them and their wares in print and online with a hammed up creative fury not seen since Theatre of Blood hacked off the Critics' Circle. A trio of bare backsides line up like maids in a row, spouting forth verbatim quotes from real reviews of the performers' own back catalogue. Out of this develops a series of knowing routines that morph into a deliberately outrageous and ever so slightly self-obsessed caper. It's a wheeze, a dare and a giant theatrical raspberry as the trio effectively put two fingers up to critics and audience alike. It's also a meticulously planned assault that reinvents the early ...