Coffee-Table Notes

Citizens Theatre, Glasgow Five stars    Sparks fly on the factory floor at the start of Joanna Bowman’s explosive revival of Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize winning play, first seen in 2015, but looking more pertinent than ever. As a portent of things to come, this opening image is as telling as the fact that the sides of Francis O’Connor’s set look like a cage, inside which, some kind of combat takes place. This is how it is, not just in the factory, but in the bar where the workers splash their wages around, and almost certainly in the prison the two young men at the heart of the play have just been released from.    The time moves between the turn of the century when it felt like people could get by, to eight years later when the world has changed. The place is Reading, Pennsylvania, a blue-collar heartland fired by iron and steel. Here, Tracey, Cynthia and Jessie spend their down time getting hammered, as do Tracey’s son Jason and Cynthia’s boy Chris. The...

Òran Mór, Glasgow Four stars   Hannah Howie has something to get off her chest. The clue is in the title of the actress and singer’s new cabaret style show, the latest mini musical to grace A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s ongoing lunchtime theatre season. Howie’s extravaganza is founded on the life changing diagnosis that she had an 85 per cent chance of contracting cancer. She subsequently turned her decision to have a double mastectomy into something she can have a song and dance about.    Howie does this with the aid of her two little helpers who each represent her Left Breast and her Right Breast, aka Georgia and Freda. As Howie struts her stuff all dressed up in suitably funereal black, G and F are brought to life by Kirsty Malone and Gregor John-Owen, who back her up as assorted comedy doctors as well as busting some moves in step with their mistress. Given that each has a personality of their own - Georgia is the feisty one, Freda the smaller of the two - it is only rig...

Central Hall, Edinburgh Four stars   A community hall vibe percolates the room for this Mayday extravaganza put together by actress/director Cora Bissett and poet and playwright Hannah Lavery for the National Theatre of Scotland. This one night compendium of theatre, music and spoken word aims to be ‘Rapid Responses to Our Times’. With an election due in less than a week’s time, the rise of the far right, events in Gaza, institutionalised racism, historical revisionism and all points between are put on the frontline by way of a series of artistic responses to the volatile and divisive times we currently live in. The result is an old school political cabaret writ large.    This is kick-started in noisily unambiguous fashion by singer Declan Walsh with the punky oppositionist rage of his song, Nazi Boys, accompanied by a house band featuring guitarist Djana Gabrielle. Gabrielle later performs one of the night’s standout moments, when she sings Dala, written b...

As 1980s pop myths go, the story of Talk Talk is one of the most mysterious. Graeme Thomson’s new book, In Another World – The Four Seasons of Talk Talk, digs deep into the story of the Mark Hollis fronted group who went from glossy synth-pop chart botherers over their first two albums before creating some of the most sublime musical meditations of their era.   Over three albums – The Colour of Spring (1986), Spirit of Eden (1988) and Laughing Stock (1991) – Talk Talk’s core trio of Hollis, bassist Paul Webb and drummer Lee Harris, plus producer Tim Friese-Greene, created a series of lushly crafted and increasingly insular soundscapes before disappearing for good. An eponymous stripped back 1998 solo album by Hollis hinted at things to come. As it turned out, it was a last gift to the world before he withdrew from music entirely.   The silence of all band members increased the Talk Talk legend, while the death of Hollis in 2019 aged sixty-four put a full stop on a group that e...

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh  Five stars   The seasons have shifted since Karine Polwart’s multi media elegy to a 200 year old Sabal palm tree about to be felled in Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Garden first blew in to the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Back then, in the heat of such a turbulent backdrop, Polwart’s elegant mix of storytelling and song stood out enough to be declared a masterpiece. Eight months on, Polwart’s meticulously realised immersive song cycle has blossomed enough for a countrywide tour that begins at the Lyceum, where an early workshop of the show was presented.    From the moment Pippa Murphy’s environmental soundscape rattles with the wind, this homecoming of sorts remains a monument to the power of the natural world and the glorious constructions that grow from it. As the tree is plucked from the wild, taken across oceans to foreign lands and kept in glasshouses that can barely contain it, it evolves into a magnificently plumed hybrid it tu...

Times of strife of various kinds take over Scottish stages this month, with working class lives very much to the fore as well as showbiz, spies and taking to the skies.   Windblown Byre Theatre, St Andrews, 2 May; Eden Court, Inverness,  6 May ; The Pavilion, Glasgow,  8-9 May ; Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling,  14 May ; Perth Concert Hall,  16 May. Karine Polwart returns with her hugely successful fusion of storytelling and song inspired by a 200 year old tree at the Royal Botanic Garden. Featuring sound design by Pippa Murphy, stunning visuals by Jamie Wardrop and piano accompaniment by jazz pianist David Milligan, Polwart’s creation was described in The Herald’s five star review as ‘a work of monumental beauty’.      The High Life: The Musical – Still Living It! Eden Court, Inverness until 2 May; Dundee Rep,  6-9 May ; King’s Theatre, Glasgow,  12-23 May. More than three decades on from Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson’s short-lived Sco...

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh  Four stars   Johnny Cash and June Carter were destined to be together from the moment they met back stage at the Grand Ol’ Opry. The mercurial life the first couple of country music shared until their deaths months apart in 2003 could have been channelled from the sorts of songs that made them both international stars. Those lives are laid bare in Des McAnuff and Robert Cary’s warts and all tribute to Johnny and June in a show that goes beyond a greatest hits affair to get to the emotional heart of two pop cultural legends.    As the title suggests, this is made myth by a ballad, sung and played throughout by Johnny and June’s son and country music star in his own right, John Carter Cash. Played with considerable charm by Ryan O’Donnell, John becomes the show’s narrator, with a supporting cast doubling up as assorted personal and musical foils as well as what is effectively an all crooning Greek chorus.    The story Jo...