Coffee-Table Notes

When the Tom Robinson Band stormed the barricades of the pop charts in 1978 with their hit single, 2, 4, 6, 8 Motorway, British society seemed on the verge of breakdown. As TRB became figureheads of Rock Against Racism, the organisation founded after Eric Clapton’s racist outburst during a 1976 Concert, rabble-rousing anthems such as Up Against the Wall and Glad to be Gay captured the uneasy spirit of the age. The title track of TRB’s debut album, Power in the Darkness, a call to arms punctuated by a monologue in the hysterical voice of a rabid right-winger, showed what punky youth were up against. Almost half a century on, and with the UK in a similar state of collapse, TRB’s songs might just have found their time again.   ‘ The two TRB albums came out of a time of uncertainty,’ says Robinson, who brings a new TRB line up to Scotland for three dates. ‘There was mass unemployment among the youth for the first time, and nobody really knew where the country was going. We didn't know ...

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Four stars   When Greenpeace activists occupied the Shell UK owned decommissioned Brent Spar oil store off the coast of Shetland in 1995 to prevent it being sunk in the North Sea, little did anyone know that thirty years later it would inspire a new musical. This is exactly what the  Sleeping Warrior company have done, however, transforming the Brent Spar story into a rousing radio friendly pop drama that chimes with the times while remaining easy on the ear.    Writer/directors Andy McGregor and Isla Cowan set out their store on Brent Spar itself, brought to life by designer Claire Halleran as an iron and steel arena the Greenpeace activists make their own. The group are a motley mix of idealism and experience as epitomised by Matthew McKenna’s de facto leader Karl and Katie Weir’s hard liner Engel, with enthusiastic new recruits Colin, played by Nathan French, and Kara Swinney’s young mum Rachel also in tow. As personal and political...

  Five stars As the historicisation of Scotland’s pop back pages runs on apace, Blair Young and Carla J. Easton’s study of the women too often written out of that history is a vital and necessary labour of love. From the 1960s pop adventures of Edinburgh sisters The McKinleys, Since Yesterday talks to post punk sheroes across the decades before pointing the way to the future in a mix of history lesson, personal essay and manifesto.   Drawing from her own experience as driving force of Teen Canteen, Easton’s narration unearths a hidden history of sisters doing it for themselves in a misogynistic music industry. Post punk auteurs such as The Ettes, Sophisticated Boom Boom, Sunset Gun and The Twinsets tell their stories, paving the way for 1990s home grown mould-breakers such as Hello Skinny, Lung Leg, Pink Kross and Sally Skull, with the likes of The Hedrons picking up the baton. And lets not forget Strawberry Switchblade’s bona fide pop stardom, as the only Scottish girl b...

Arts at Loaningdale, Biggar  Four stars   Hollywood is a long way from rural 1920s Clydesdale in Martin Travers’ new play for the Braw Clan company, set up in 2023 to produce plays in Scots. In a cramped cottage, teenage Nancy’s fantasies of becoming a star of the big screen like her silent movie idols beamed into the local picturehouse are all she has to escape the everyday drudgery she looks set to be stuck with forever.    With her mother Annie out at church and her bedbound granny wheezing her way to oblivion in the other room, Nancy is free to sing, dance, put on lipstick and cut her hair, with only the mirror on the wall for an audience. Only a mountain of dirty laundry is holding her back from making the big time. Five years on, and a prodigal’s return in the wake of the talkies sees Nancy’s sister Wee Moon harbour her own dreams of fame as history looks set to repeat itself.    There is something Tennessee Williams-like about Travers’ heroines in Ro...

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Four stars   As the artists formerly known as The Smiths bicker over who holds custody of their name, what of the children? What became of the effete youths who found solace and salvation in the band’s miserablist anthems as they came of age?    Theatre director Ben Harrison was one such soldier, as the Smiths appropriated title of his autobiographical mash up of stories and songs from his formative years make clear. As the archetypal small town teenager in search of a cause and a love affair to call his own, Harrison’s fictionalised self portraits recall an awkward young dreamer with stars in his eyes and a habit of falling for older women of twenty-one. Such defining moments are laid bare inbetween breaking into his school to hang communist flags and painting his bedroom red and black.   Set against lighting designer Simon Wilkinson’s wall of wine bar neon in Scott Johnston’s deftly woven together production, Harrison’s Proustian patchwork is ...

Dundee Rep Four stars   Ghosts are very much in the house in Alan Ayckbourn’s 2002 play. The garden too for that matter. And the tennis court. Not to mention what might be lurking at the bottom of the well. This is something the two middle-aged sisters at the play’s centre must square up to when they are reunited in their childhood home following their father’s death.    High flying Abigail is making a prodigal’s return after years of collapsed businesses and broken relationships while living abroad. This left her sister Miriam to tend to their now dearly departed dad while putting her own life on hold. Or so it seems. Only the old boy’s nurse Alice knows the full story, and she wants a cool hundred grand to keep it to herself.    What follows is a series of double bluffs, things that go bump in the night and daddy issues galore as what looks suspiciously like a case of accidental murder unfolds alongside a series of increasingly troubling true confessions....

Pleasance Courtyard, Pleasance Two Three Stars   Randy Thatcher is a bedroom bound songwriter who thinks he just penned the greatest musical the world has ever seen. Playing to his invisible audience (not an impossibility at this time of year), 21-year-old Randy wears his heart on his sleeve in his science fiction based showtunes, in which our alien hero, the tellingly named Gazandy, finds true love in a way Randy can only yearn for. Like a musical theatre Daniel Johnston with a penchant for sock puppets, Randy is every showbiz wannabe who eventually has to face the music.   Real life New York songwriter Matt Haughey’s solo show shines an incisive spotlight on the perils of trying to get a foot in the door of an industry where everything is a talent contest these days. Accompanying himself on piano in Travis Greisler’s production, Haughey ramps up Randy’s high anxiety in what might well be regarded as a twenty-first century take on a backstage musical, with the talent hawking ...