Coffee-Table Notes

Lochgelly Centre Three stars     When twenty-year-old Mary Shelley published Frankenstein in 1818, little did she realise the enduring scale of the monster she had just spawned. More than two hundred years on from what is regarded as the first science fiction novel, writer Julia Taudevin has drawn inspiration from Shelley’s story and dragged it firmly into the twenty-first century.    Taudevin’s title character is a machine age product of TechBro, the near future’s all consuming conglomerate on a mission to mass produce an army of robots programmed for your every need. Frankie, alas, has been set up to be more human than the real thing. This causes her to be rejected by the Bro-powers that be and left in a limbo with a group of fellow prototypes who similarly don’t compute.    This causes the emotionally charged humanoid to embark on a quest to meet her maker, who comes, not in the form of company man and possibly mad scientist Frank, but the more independe...

Paddy Higson – Film producer   Born June 2nd1941; died April 13th 2025     Paddy Higson, who has died aged 83, was a trailblazing film producer who was long regarded as the mother of the Scottish film industry. Over more than forty years she worked closely with several generations of directors, writers and fellow producers in Scotland. She helped foster a series of films that set the tone for a way of contemporary Scottish filmmaking that was witty, urbane and quietly aspirational.   Higson worked with director Bill Forsyth as associate producer on his debut feature, That Sinking Feeling (1979), was production supervisor on Gregory’s Girl (1980) and associate producer on Comfort and Joy (1984). She also worked as line producer on director Michael Hoffman and Ninian Dunnett’s Edinburgh set comedy, Restless Natives (1985).   While she played a crucial role in nurturing all those films, Higson’s first credit as a producer in her own right was Living Apart Together ...

Oran Mor, Glasgow Four stars   Life is a curse for the street-smart queen with the messy domestic life in Nikki Kalkman’s reimagining of Greek mythology. Instead of simply bumping off her heroine after her incestuous affair with her more dramatised son, Kalkman has Jocasta arrive with a flourish as she attempts to gain an access all areas pass into the Underworld. Amidst designer Gillian Argo’s celestial looking array of curtains, Jocasta is forced to tell her story to the unseen godlike gatekeepers, purging her own demons as she goes.    As Jocasta offloads all, from one night stands with muscle-bound himbos to becoming an abused trophy bride at the hands of king Laius, where ‘the fingerprint of every day was bruises and boredom’, it is clear Jocasta has been damaged enough to warrant some kind of intervention. As she gets herself the ultimate toy boy to die for, alas, the sex may be great, but as the local gossips aren’t shy of pointing out, it’s complicated. ...

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh  Four stars    Don’t mess with Calamity Jane. If you do, you’re likely to be shot down in a dramatic standoff you’ll never win. This is as true of any attempt at reworking Charles K. Freeman’s 1961 stage version of David Butler’s 1953 James O’Hanlon scripted movie as it is of the gal herself. As unreconstructed as this rootin’, tootin’ yarn concerning tomboyish Jane’s getting of wisdom remains, Freeman’s play is as faithful to its big screen roots as the assorted brides at the end of the play are to their various beloveds who look like they finally struck gold.   All this is driven by composer Sammy Fain and lyricist Paul Francis Webster’s wagonload of showtunes that have become sing-along classics. This is evident from the opening moments of this touring revival of Nikolai Foster’s 2014 production, first seen at the Watermill Theatre, Newbury. As a grizzled old cowboy plucks out a few notes on a banjo, it immediately prompts the audi...

The ghosts of musics past can easily send seekers down online rabbit holes in search of enlightenment. For many, this often begins with The Fall. Oh! Brother is the tellingly named show hosted by siblings Paul and Steve Hanley, who both served lengthy stints in the ultimate outsider group and lived to tell the tale.   Since 2021, Oh! Brother has seen the Hanleys engage an array of former band members, celebrity fans and other fellow travellers for discursive chats about life in and out of Mark E Smith’s ever changing ensemble. Highlights include chats with the band’s former keyboardist Marcia Schofield, ex footballer Pat Nevin, Ian Rankin and John Niven. If at times it sounds like a bunch of old blokes in a pub gathered like a post punk reincarnation of Last of the Summer Wine, that’s because sometimes it is.   Working in similar territory is Electronically Yours with Martyn Ware, with former Human League and current Heaven 17 stalwart Ware opening up his even more extensive a...

Òran Mor, Glasgow Three stars   Birthday girl Scarlet is in for a big surprise when she goes home to mum Sarah for her twenty-first. The very special present waiting for her in Jennifer Adam’s new play for Òran Mor’s current A Play, a Pie and a Pint lunchtime theatre season turns out to be something pretty titanic. To say it wasn’t what Scarlet was expecting is something of an understatement, especially as an environmental activist with big plans of her own with her girlfriend and fellow agitator Judyth. To carry out those plans, however, Scarlet needs to get her hands on her inheritance left to her by her dad, who passed away fifteen years earlier. A somewhat large obstacle, alas, is preventing Scarlet from getting her hands on it. In an increasingly hothouse environment, things go into meltdown at every level.    Adam’s play merges the personal and the political just as it fuses everyday absurdism with social realist observation. This looks to the metaphorical ridiculou...

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Four stars Dead poets don’t always get second lives once they are lost to history. Once rediscovered and reclaimed, however, poetic license is up for grabs in a way where myth-making is often more interesting than the boring old truth.     So it goes with James Macpherson, the eighteenth century Scottish writer who caused a literary sensation with his apparent rediscovery of ancient Gaelic bard, Ossian. Trouble was, it was quickly debunked as fake news, with the artistic gatekeepers of the day led by Samuel Johnson dismissing Macpherson’s apparent exclusive as a hoax of the highest order.    This is the starting point for Martin O’Connor’s own dramatic poem that quickly goes way beyond Macpherson and Ossian’s place in Scotland’s cultural canon to a more personal reflection on what it means to be Scottish. In a landscape as kitsch as the tartan tat shop Emma Bailey’s set resembles, O’Connor explores his own family roots on the Isle of Lewis and t...