Coffee-Table Notes

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars If you can remember the 1980s, you probably weren’t there. If those who were there need a refresher course, they could do worse than check out this long overdue revival of John McKay’s play, which first graced the Traverse’s old Grassmarket home in 1987. This saw McKay take his work from street theatre combo The Merry Mac Fun Co onto the main stage before embarking on a career as a film and TV writer, director and producer.     McKay’s trajectory might just mirror the future life of young Eck, whose preparations for a job interview with BBC Scotland in 1985 are rudely interrupted by his dad Willie, who makes his unreconstructed presence felt in everything Eck does. This is the case from the interview itself to the local barbers before he joins Eck on his date in a fancy style bar.   This would be mortifying enough for any young shaver with ideas above his station attempting to shake off his roots and make his way in the world. G...

At first glance at the cover image of Alicia Bruce’s new book, one might be forgiven for presuming it to be a coffee table tome immortalising North East Scotland’s epic rural landscape. Look closer, however, and it heralds a vital pictorial document of a community campaign against a predatory attempt to erase it along with its natural surroundings, redrawing the map in the name of big business.   The title of the book is the giveaway, taken from a song by Karine Polwart, who recounts in her afterword how she co-opted the motto of the MacLeod clan. Given the circumstances of the song’s composition, this it is as much anthem as work of art.   The same can be said of Bruce’s book, which features eighty photographs that bear witness to almost two decades of resistance by residents of Menie, close to Balmedie beach in Aberdeenshire, to Donald Trump’s building of a golf club on what was then a Site of Special Scientific Interest. This is a status supposed to save it from hostile dev...

Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow until 28 April 2024   In the GOMA shop, just beside the loading bay style entrance to Beagles & Ramsay’s new exhibition, limited edition t-shirts, tote bags, lanyards and postcards based on the show are nestled next to assorted art stars’ merch. While not usual to advertise within the confines of a review, given the Glasgow based double act of John Beagles and Graham Ramsay’s long-standing dissection of consumer capital, in this context, it seems appropriate.   This year’s model sees the pair in their occasional guise of New Heads on the Block and Rope-a-Dope transform the gallery space into a department store. Here, off the peg items and bespoke couture are modelled by eighty-one life-size flatpack showroom dummies that wear their brand with pride.    Constructed from cheap office furniture and resembling Viz comic characters or more regular mannequins after a crash diet and a makeover, the models sport ostentatious uber-moderne ou...

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Four stars The Scots negative in the title of Gary McNair’s audacious new version of Charles Dickens’ rites of passage epic Great Expectations says it all in Andy Arnold’s slow burning production. Here, after all, is a story about how a smart working class boy with ideas above his station is groomed for the success that sees him corrupted before he eventually finds his way home.   By rewriting Dickens’ boy hero Pip as a gallus Glasgow patter merchant, McNair, Arnold and co gives him even more of a common touch. As embodied by a brilliantly rambunctious Gavin Jon Wright, Pip tells his own story in what begins as a motor mouthed stand-up routine full of scurrilous asides and one-line gags. These are brought to life by everyone else on stage who haunt Pip’s imposter syndrome nightmares. Only when he learns to talk proper and acquire the airs and graces of a gentleman does he lose sight of himself.   Karen Dunbar’s increasingly creepy Miss Havisham leads a ro...

One imagines taking a walk with Claire M Singer to be a magical experience. You can hear hints of such magic on   Saor , the Aberdeenshire born composer’s forthcoming album of pipe organ based works released on the Touch   1 label, home to such environmentally inclined experimentalists as Chris Watson   2 and the late Philip Jeck   3 .     Pronounced ‘Sieur’, as in ‘monsieur’,   Sao r is inspired by wide-open space, with tracks such as ‘Càrn’, ‘Forrig’, and 'Braeriach' all named after Munros Singer has climbed during her wanderings in the Cairngorms. The album’s closing title track, meanwhile, sums up Singer’s worldview in an epic twenty-four and a half minute piece that translates from Scottish Gaelic as ‘Free’.     This feeling is confirmed at the end of the track, recorded in one take using five different organs in Orgelpark   4 , the Amsterdam based concert hall for organists containing numerous organs that span the centuries. With ...