Coffee-Table Notes

The Playhouse, Edinburgh  Four stars   Life’s a scream for Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, the creators and stars of TV anthology show, Inside No.9. Over nine (natch) series’ between 2014 and 2024, Pemberton and Shearsmith mined the ghosts of showbiz past to make something that was nominally a sit-com but which came possessed with a knowingly dark heart. The show’s dramatic marriage of 1970s hammy horror and tales of the unexpected played tricks with form, content and genre that mixed arcane gothic with post modern archness in a way that pushed whatever button was going.    So it goes with this hit stage show, which sees the duo present a bumper sized live compendium designed to keep both diehards and novices equally on their toes. Opening with an extended scene-setter that plumbed the depths of every theatregoer’s worst nightmare, Pemberton and Shearsmith introduce what on one level is one great big theatrical in-joke before framing the bulk of the first half ...

Theatre 118, Glasgow  Four stars   It was all Sheena Easton’s fault. If the Bellshill diva hadn’t made her prodigal’s return to Glasgow for 1990’s free concert, The Big Day, in possession of a transatlantic accent, the girl gang at the centre of Milly Sweeney’s play wouldn’t have ended up in a police holding cell.    To rewind for those who might not have been there, The Big Day brought a quarter of a million people out onto the streets of Glasgow to see some of Scotland’s biggest pop acts of the era, including Texas, Deacon Blue, Hue and Cry and Wet Wet Wet. Coming in the thick of the city’s year as European City of Culture, it also made a statement about Glasgow’s homegrown renaissance. As big and shiny a PR exercise as it might have been, most of the acts had working class roots.    Hence the disgust of Debs, Fiona, Gracie and Kirsty regarding Ms. Easton’s grand entrance. Having grown up beside each other on the same estate, this is the first time the gi...

Theatre 118, Glasgow  Three stars   International football euphoria is on every fan’s mind this week following Scotland’s World Cup qualifying victory over Denmark on Tuesday night. But beyond all that snatching victory from the jaws of defeat type stuff, what about the grassroots teams that slug it out on neglected pitches week in, week out, with little reward other than some dreams of glory and loyalty to those who put on the same shirts.    Loyalty is everything in Patrick Marber’s play, first seen in 2015, and revived here as the debut show from the brand new Paperhat Theatre company. Set in the bare brick dressing room of a small time semi professional non-league football club, that loyalty from all three characters is bought off pretty quickly. Even the saintly Johnny Yates, former club hero turned kit man and informal talent scout, almost gives way to temptation in the face of big talking Jimmy Kidd. An old school manager with the crumpled suit and gobby attit...

Oran Mor, Glasgow Three stars   In the wee small hours, the members of the Full Shilling Social Club gather under cover to share stories and imbibe good whisky. Given that Jimmy and May are the only two members, it’s a pretty exclusive affair, but that is how they like it. The so called retirement village the pair have been decamped to is a pretty good front for such nocturnal activities, even if neither party is being quite as honest as they appear.    May was an actress, and, like anyone of her vintage, has anecdotes aplenty. There’s the one about the wannabe Hollywood starlet with tooth issues for starters. Best of all is the one about meeting Frank Sinatra back stage after ol’ blue eyes’ 1990 show at Ibrox. As for Jimmy, he can match May with gags aplenty. But what will happen if May goes to live with what up until now has been her terminally absent son? And why is she pretty much dress rehearsing her conversations with Jimmy, writing down every bon mot in advance les...

The Playhouse, Edinburgh  Four stars   When little Anna Mae Bullock caused a commotion in church when she started freestyling on the hymns, her destiny as a soul singer with one of the biggest voices in town was assured. Or at least that is how this epic homage to that little girl who morphed into Tina Turner tells it, with a bunch of greatest hits to go with it. One of them, Nutbush City Limits, is here the number that got Anna Mae into so much trouble. Reinvented here from the go-go groove created with her creative partner, husband and nemesis Ike Turner, it becomes the gospel hymn that always lurked beneath.   Now embarking on its first UK tour since its initial West End run in 2018, Phyllida Lloyd’s production of a book by Katori Hall with Frank Ketelaar and Kees Prins is a warts and all look at Turner life and work that sees her combat prejudice, misogyny and abuse to become a triumphant figure.   Deserted by her angry mother and left with an even angrier father...

Òran Mór , Glasgow Three stars   Everything is up in the air for Liam, the twenty-something stoner in Kevin P. Gilday’s new play, this week’s lunchtime offering at A Play, a Pie and a Pint. Liam is the sole surviving resident of a condemned inner city high-rise about to be demolished, with or without his presence.    Only when social worker Joanne turns up at Liam’s door does he realise he’s been made the figurehead of a protest against the demolition he wasn’t aware of being a part. All he wants is to stay in a room where the presence of his lost mum still lingers in the plants and the black and white films he watches.    As Joanne attempts to ensure Liam won’t throw himself out of his flat window, she reveals ghosts of her own that she is attempting to lay to rest. From Liam’s initial suspicion of Joanne, the pair form a bond that occasionally misfires before the plug is finally pulled on what Liam used to call home.    Gilday’s play takes a look at ...

King’s Theatre, Glasgow Four stars   The warm up guy has done his bit, the recording light is on, and anticipation is high for a live taping of one of the best-loved sitcoms of all time. Except, as the title of writers Bob and Tobly McSmith and composer Assaf Gleizner’s musical highlights like a prompt card waved at a studio audience, we are about to witness a loving pastiche of the show that inspired, not just catchphrases, but haircuts and lifestyle choices too.    Over a decade from 1994 to 2004, David Crane and Marta Kauffman’s flatshare comedy concerning the lives and loves of a goofy sextet of upwardly mobile late twenty and early thirty something New Yorkers saw a generation of fans do their growing up alongside them.    Ross, Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe and Joey are all here in Michael Gyngell’s production of a show which has now been on the go almost as long as the programme it parodies prior to this UK tour. And it is a cr...