Coffee-Table Notes

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Five stars The sound of birdsong floats about the auditorium as Karine Polwart comes on stage to perform her meditation on the land, sea and air that surrounds her in Fala, the village just outside Edinburgh she calls home. It's a sound that soothes, possibly because, as Polwart talks of the 2,400 pink-footed geese that fly from Greenland to Fala every winter, it's clear it is the voices of the many. Skyborne socialism, Polwart calls it. The geese become a leaping off point for a show that fuses songs and stories to create a beautiful evocation of the need for community in an increasingly fractured world. This is the case whether Polwart talks us through her complicated pregnancy a decade ago and the heroic support she received, or an unlikely but apt evocation of football manager Alex Ferguson's philosophy of teamwork. There are too the everyday tragedies of those whose lives were cruelly cut short, like real life couple Roberta and ...

King's Theatre, Edinburgh Three stars When successful classical violinist Stephanie is struck down in her prime by multiple sclerosis, her entire creative lifeblood is ripped asunder as she is left wheelchair-bound. This leads to a set of reluctant sessions with stoic psychiatrist Dr Feldmann, whose gnomic line of inquiry is a knowing counterpoint to Stephanie's more mercurial tendencies. As her moods swing between defensiveness, rage and self-loathing, Stephanie is forced to face up to a new life, literally playing second fiddle to both her less talented students and her increasingly experimental composer husband. Tom Kempinski's 1980 study of enforced artistic debilitation was a huge hit when it first appeared in 1980. This was possibly because of the play's reported inspiration, iconic cellist Jacqueline du Pre, who, like Stephanie, also had her musical career cut short by MS. This is a connection Kempinski now denies in a pithy programme note for this touri...

When Anders Lustgarten wrote the first draft of his play, Lampedusa, in late 2014, it seemed no-one was really talking about what was a then largely un-noticed international migrant crisis. The week before the play opened in London a few months later, Lustgarten notes, over 400 migrants were killed when a boat capsized off the coast of Libya. A few days later, over 700 people were drowned trying to reach the Italian island of Lampedusa, which the play is named after, and which has become a primary European entry point for mainly African migrants. “The journey of the play is an interesting one,” says Lustgarten, as a new production of Lampedusa prepares to open in the intimate confines of the Citizens Theatre's Circle Studio in association with the young Wonder Fools company, overseen by director Jack Nurse. “I'd been doing a lot of work on development banks, and one of the things they do is displace people, and through organisations like the IMF (International Monetary Fund)...

To whom it may concern I was surprised to read in The Art Newspaper how internationally renowned Edinburgh artspace Inverleith House had apparently been 'saved' from closure. Simon Milne, the publicly accountable Regius Keeper of Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, where Inverleith House is situated, claimed that “There was a rumour that we are not going to do art anymore...that was never the case.” Milne repeated his claims in the Herald newspaper on September 15 th 2017. Milne's claims directly contradict the statement RBGE were forced to make in October 2016 when details of the closure were leaked to the press. The statement said that “Inverleith House will no longer be dedicated to the display of contemporary art, and RBGE is looking at options for the alternative use of the building.” In an interview in the Herald on October 19 th 2016, Milne was quoted as saying that Inverleith House was unable to “wash its face” financially. Milne also said that “These are ...

In a dimly lit rehearsal room, a troupe of performers are slow-walking their way into the performance area as mournful music plays. Led by actresses Pauline Goldsmith and Cath Whitefield, the other twelve people seem to be clawing their way onstage,cutting loose as they go in some undefined quasi religious ritual. At moments the choreographed stage shapes they throw look somewhere between the video for Michael Jackson's song, Thriller, and a line dance. While some of it can't help but look silly, it is the sight of a company cutting loose in order to explore what their performance, in its early stages and still largely formless, is about. This may be standard for a theatre company such as Vanishing Point, whose artistic director and creative visionary Matthew Lenton is sitting in the dark, shouting words from a text at the performers as they go. With the musical accompaniment, it's a hypnotic and oddly moving spectacle. The best thing of all about is when you remember t...

Pitlochry Festival Theatre Four stars Enough tartan tat to line Pitlochry high street carpets the stage like a badly furnished highland hotel at the opening of Peter Arnott's swish new stage adaptation of Compton Mackenzie's 1941 comic novel. A pantomime style stag looms on the horizon before a troupe of socialist hikers march onto land marked by 'No Trespassing' signs later used for firewood. Welcome to Glenbogle, the crumbling pile overseen by Donald MacDonald of MacDonald, aka Ben Nevis, whose territorial claims on the land don't seem to apply when he and his partner in crime Kilwhillie are flogging it off to big-talking American developer, Chester Royde. Chester's trophy bride Carrie has her own vested interest, while her sister-in-law Myrtle is more inclined to colonise hunky nationalist poet, Alan, than nice-but-dim Hector. Tellingly, Alan sides with the tartan Tories to repel English boarders. The symbolism is laid on with a Saltire-patterned...

In 1967, the world was being turned upside down. With the counter culture in full psychedelic swing, the so-called Summer of Love was about to break, even as protests against the Vietnam War were building to a peak while race riots flared up across America. In the UK, homosexuality was decriminalised, while abortion was legalised. Closer to home, Celtic won the European Cup and championship, the first Northern European club to do so. Meanwhile, the global village Marshall McLuhan had predicted was brought into our living rooms when the first ever live international satellite broadcast saw 400 million viewers watch the Beatles fanfare in All You Need is Love. It may have been the Fab Four's kaleidoscopic masterpiece, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and later their Magical Mystery Tour record and film that sound-tracked the year, but things were happening underground as well. Beyond the tripped-out whimsy of Pink Floyd's debut record, the Doors, Love's F...