Coffee-Table Notes

Five stars Like a pulp fiction auteur, Barry Adamson has been laying bare his soundtrack inspired brand of after-hours sleazy listening for more than three decades now. With a back-story that saw him come crawling out of punky, funky Manchester as bassist with divine fabulists Magazine before taking things to extremes with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Adamson has long left those old gangs behind. Stepping out of the shadows, he has become a maverick loner and one-man nouveau rat pack with ever-expanding widescreen ambitions as he continues to remake and remodel classic soul-funk big band bump and grind in his own retro cool image.   So it goes with Cut to Black, Adamson’s tenth solo affair, and his first since the publication of the first part of his memoir, Up Above the City, Down Beneath the Stars. It is his first outing too since his soundtrack to the documentary, Scala, which tells the story of London’s ultimate outsider cinema. In a parallel universe, such a long lost emporium...

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Four stars   Murder becomes Katie and Hannah, the two young women at the centre of Maureen Lennon’s riot grrrl soundtracked feminist fable. It’s there in the true crime podcasts they tune in to as teenagers, when girls their own age disappear in the woods. It’s there much later too, when their own real life experience becomes infinitely stranger than fiction.   In the thick of their justifiable rage, the duo accidentally conjure up The Furies, the Greek goddesses of vengeance, who here come equipped with electric guitars, a fistful of songs and attitude to match. As we rewind on Katie and Hannah’s getting of wisdom, the litany of everyday misogyny they must square up to goes some way to explaining how they got here. With the Furies’ celestial girl gang at their side, Katie and Hannah must carve out a destiny of their own, learning to channel their anger into something less homicidal.   Tapping into the anger of real life women in the face o...

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Five stars “Things fare better when played and played again,” says Liz Kettle’s  Zelig-like mistress of ceremonies Carlin at the opening of Zinnie Harris’ ferocious feminist reimagining of Shakespeare’s Scottish play. This speedy homecoming of Harris’ own production following its 2023 premiere follows runs in London and New York, where it picked up four Drama Desk nominations. All of which makes Nicole Cooper’s Lady M even more of a conquering heroine as she transcends her role as the power behind the throne to become part of a weird sisterhood that may or may not have exploded out of her head.   Things begin on familiar enough terrain once Carlin slips inside the action on Tom Piper’s expansive set, as Adam Best’s Macbeth and James Robinson’s Banquo are led astray by the Sisters, here for once given the dignity of names. This eases into a last gasp jazz age party scene as the plot to kill Duncan is set in motion inbetween dealing with Star...

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Four stars Don’t be fooled by the sucker punch breeziness of the Superman styled promo images that accompany the National Theatre of Scotland’s staging of Damian Barr’s 2013 memoir. While there are laughs to be had, Barr’s look back at growing up gay in small town 1980s Scotland can be a pretty brutal ride at times.    Brought to life by Barr, co-writer James Ley and director Suba Das, we first meet DB celebrating his new commission with his husband Mark. But how to go about unearthing his personal remembrance of things past without avoiding the traumas that shaped him?    The only answer, as DB is advised, is to relive it all, however painful that may be. This sends Barr on a trip that uses a similar sleight of hand to that used in TV fantasia, Ashes to Ashes, in which a retro kitsch setting is the backdrop for some very serious meditations on an era that had a lot more going on than its seeming revolt into style.    In designer ...

Peter Kelly – Actor Born October 1, 1941; died March 14 2024   Peter Kelly, who has died aged 82, was an actor of sophistication, sensitivity and boundless wit, who went from his early forays on stage as a teenager to become an elder statesman of Scotland’s theatre fraternity. Inbetween, Kelly became an integral part of the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow’s loose knit 1970s ensemble. He also appeared at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh in the premieres of Tom McGrath’s Jimmy Boyle inspired play, The Hardman (1977), and new works by C.P. Taylor.   Kelly performed in a succession of musical revues, devised with novelist and playwright Archie Hind. These included a solo turn in I am Cabaret, in which Kelly played a version of Kander and Ebb’s Emcee character, who he would later play in the musical itself. There were stints as a TV and radio presenter, and Kelly became one of the finest dames in pantomime, first at the Citz, then at the King’s Theatre, Glasgow, working alongside the like...

When Anne Wood visited Pakistan to meet the father she had never known, the experience opened up another world that stayed with her. More than thirty years later, the renowned Scottish violinist tells her story in When Mountains Meet, a cross-cultural hybrid of storytelling and song that bridges continents and musical styles. Told as a conversation between Scottish and South-Asian music, a vibrant live score composed by Wood combines alap, raag, reel and strathspey, with vocals performed in a mix of English, Gaelic and Hindustani to tell Wood’s deeply personal story.   When Wood first wrote to her father, ‘He didn’t know I had been born, but replied quickly to my tentative letter introducing myself, completely accepting me into his life as we developed a fiery but loving father-daughter relationship. ’   Wood’s musical pedigree stems from her Sutherland roots, and as a founder member of folk/jazz fusion group, The Cauld Blast Orchestra up to her current tenure as a member of ‘...

When Lynn MacRitchie gave a public lecture at Edinburgh College of Art in February this year titled The Participation Art Event 1973: Provocation or Prophecy, it shed light on one of Scotland’s lesser known avant-garde art happenings that might finally have found its time. Instigated by MacRitchie while a student at ECA more than half a century ago, The Participation Art Event (PAE) explored the idea of art being a collective action rather than an individual, studio-bound pursuit. Over five days in December 1973, PAE took over ECA’s Sculpture Court, where a series of participatory actions took place. At the centre of this were David Medalla (1942-2020) and John Dugger (1948-2023). Medalla was a Filipino artist and activist who in 1964 co-founded the kinetic art based Signals London gallery, and was one of those behind hippie/counterculture collective the Exploding Galaxy. It was through the latter that Medalla met Dugger, an American artist who landed on the scene in 1967. The pair col...