Coffee-Table Notes

Institute of Contemporary Arts, London until August 4 th “If you ask me what I want, I’ll tell you” declaims Kathy Acker towards the end of a video recording of Pussy, King of the Pirates, performed in 1996 alongside Leeds-sired post-punk-folk agitators The Mekons, “I want everything.” This was a year before the American post-modern provocateur and polymath’s death aged fifty after a lifetime of extreme literary adventures. Despite Acker’s impending demise, such a statement of intent remains possessed with a hunger to be heard and a lust for life that never quite seemed sated. Acker seemed to absorb experience with every tattoo that turned her skin into a work of art, buccaneeringly alive to the last. This is the case however much ‘in character’ a manuscript-wielding Acker may be in this DIY music-theatre staging of her final novel. It’s a spirit captured throughout this remarkable and at times overwhelming exhibition cum documentation of Acker’s life and work, as well as ...

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow Four stars Things have probably changed in the American limbo-land that inspired David Greig’s sprawling search for truth since it was first staged by the Tron Theatre at the Edinburgh International Festival sixteen years ago. However San Diego’s physical landscape worked out, one suspects the collective existential crisis portrayed by the play’s cabin-load of lost souls looking for somewhere safe to land hasn’t got much better. No matter, because there is hope in Mark Thomson’s revival, performed here by final year BA Acting students, who themselves are about to spread their wings and move into scarier climes. For one thing, at least Greig is still with us, despite writing himself into his own play as a geeky tourist and then bumping himself off in a moment that sees the criss-crossing narrative strands fleetingly converge. Moving at the pace of a Wim Wenders travelogue and just as fascinated with America, the play’s set of estra...

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars Silence isn’t always golden in Annie George and Flore Gardner’s multi-media meditation on the power of finding one’s voice and standing up to those who would rather shut women up. With writer and performer George and visual artist Gardner both onstage throughout Saffy Setohy’s production, the pair join forces to reclaim their stories in a way that gives them power and strength enough to transform personal rites of passage into something greater.   While George unravels her tale in a tumble of shared experience, Gardner doesn’t say a word, preferring to let her pictures do the talking, both live and in animated form. As her swirl of images form an evocative backdrop, they do more than merely illustrate the story, but expand on it with an abstract urgency that turns it into a visual invocation of contemporary legend. This becomes even more resonant as George and Gardner dovetail their own experiences with the tale of Philomela, th...