Coffee-Table Notes

Theatre Royal, Glasgow  Four stars    Darkness becomes Gina Gionfriddo’s new stage version of Thomas’ Harris’ 1988 novel. The second in the author’s Hannibal Lecter quartet saw the most erudite of incarcerated cannibals gnaw his way into mass consciousness by way of Jonathan Demme’s 1991 film version. More than three decades on, Gionfriddo returns to the book to pick over the horrors anew. The fact that Lecter isn’t the villain of the piece but its conscience speaks volumes about the age in which he was sired.    In Harris’ tale of rookie FBI agent Clarice Starling’s search for a serial killer nicknamed Buffalo Bill who skins his victims, we enter a 1980s where the fallout of therapy culture has left a lot of psychological damage in its wake.    In Nikolai Foster’s touring production that began life at the Curve Theatre Leicester, John Partridge’s Lecter may initially lack charm as he is wheeled on like some caged exhibit, but his dangerous presen...

As the Fringe draws to a close this week, there is still plenty to see. The ten shows listed here are essential, and there is a lot more besides.   Stand Up if You’re Here Tonight Underbelly Bristo Square until 31 Aug, 4.40-5.35pm.  An under the radar delight came with American writer John Kolvenbach’s solo play, which sees actor Jim Ortlieb give a charmingly eccentric turn as he invites the audience to connect in a post Covid plea for humanity that is part pop psychology self help routine, part performance lecture and part private confessional.     Supposing:  Traverse Theatre until 30 Aug, various times.  Zinnie Harris’ new play for the Traverse shows what happens to an ordinary everyday woman after she falls down a hole in the road and starts having visions, is soundtracked by a Greek chorus in her head and develops a righteous fury at the world at large. Harris’ own production sees a magnificent Nicole Cooper bring Harris’ mercurial writing to life as a...

The Studio Four stars    Something is cooking in Jaha Koo’s culinary dissection of exile, and it smells very much like home. For Koo, this means South Korea by way of Berlin, Brussels and beyond. Scenes of dancing neon on the roads and in the skyscrapers are projected on to a triangular tent construction that Koo eventually unfolds to build a pojangmacha, a portable street food stand that becomes Koo’s stage, kitchen and sanctuary.    Grabbing a couple of audience members from the front row à la 1970s TV cookery show The Galloping Gourmet, Koo proceeds to cook and feed them several courses of Korean delicacies. As he does so, a memoir of Koo’s very personal journey unfolds, taking in conflicts local and global en route to finding his way back to a very different South Korea.    In what is already a bittersweet taster, Koo’s story is helped along, first by a snail, then by a gummy bear, and finally by an electric eel. These all appear in animated form on scr...

Scottish Parliament Four stars   A winter coat and a kept promise isn’t too much to ask for in this theatrical installation that looks at the iniquities of the care system through the voices and experiences of those who have been through it. The National Theatre of Scotland’s main contribution to Edinburgh’s festivals season is an interactive critique of a failed system which isn’t looking like it’s going to get better any time soon.   An initiative led and scripted by playwright Nicola McCartney, One Hundred Voices forms part of Caring Scotland, a three-year listening project that has recorded and documented the experiences of Care Experienced people across the country. From this premise, audiences are navigated through an audio-visual tour of the care system in all its institutional messiness. Our guide - officially, at least - is Brian, an industry professional who does things by the book. Brian speaks to us through headphones, and is assisted - unofficially - by Kayla, who...

Assembly George Square  Four stars    Liane is angry in Corinne Salisbury’s new solo play, which looks at the murky extremes of what we now call toxic masculinity. Liane’s anger is understandable. One minute she’s taking a walk in the park after her Pilates class and trying to figure out how her primary school age daughter can deal with playground bully boys. The next she’s fending off the overtures of a fedora sporting stranger in broad daylight. Once she starts digging, the man who accosted her turns out to have a very disturbing history approaching women uninvited. Even worse, he’s not alone in his everyday abuse, but is part of an organised alliance that plans their moves and shares their every action.   One of Liane’s responses to this in Salisbury’s punchy monologue is to enrol her and her daughter Molly in a boxing class run by her brother’s ex, Nathalie. Forming an alliance with Molly’s best friend’s mum Angela, the trio become a force to be reckoned with as ...

Royal Lyceum Theatre Four stars.     The strange fruit is already hanging when the curtain slowly rises on Zora Howard’s devastating play to reveal three black men lined up close like pretty maids in a row. With their hands tied behind their backs and their legs dangling above a tree trunk like plinth, the extended silence that accompanies the presence of this seemingly unconscious trio allows to sink in exactly what we are witnessing.    As the men come awake, the double edged sword of the play’s title becomes clear as Slim, Blood and Bird bicker, banter and sing the dirtiest blues before they contort in pain as invisible nooses tighten, and the same routine repeats ad nauseam.    The three men, of course, are the symbolic victims of assorted assaults on .black community down the ages. And in Howard’s own production for the New York based Flea Theater, they are sentenced to some Beckettian limbo as they are given voice inbetween the agony.  ...

Pitlochry Festival Theatre Four stars   Happy families aren’t exactly in abundance in this long overdue revival of Iain Heggie’s care home set play, which sees ageing matriarch Andrene wheeled hither and thither in her confused search for a way out. Instead, what we get is the darkest of Joe Orton style sit-coms that sees Andrene doted on by nurse Larry, only for her errant son Derek and his gobby new girlfriend Kath to turn up. With Andrene’s fortune up for grabs, Larry and Derek have some unfinished business of their own, which at least one of them is about to pay for.    Twenty-five years after Heggie’s play first appeared at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre, Sam Hardie’s studio production for Pitlochry Festival Theatre brings this freshly rewritten version to life in slow burning and forensic fashion. This doesn’t take away the intermittent hilarity of Heggie’s meticulously constructed farce, but also highlights some of the bleakness of the situation Derek especially...