Coffee-Table Notes

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Five stars   Matthew Zajac’s now almost twenty-year-old solo play has had a journey almost as remarkable as its subject matter. Opening for previews in Glasgow’s now long lost Arches venue back in 2008 prior to a successful Edinburgh Festival Fringe run, Zajac’s autobiographical tale of his father’s flight from his homeland in the then Polish area of Galicia and everything that followed has travelled the world several times over.   This latest tour of Scotland is the biggest for some time, and chimes with the publication of a new edition of Zajac’s play that also charts his own quest to find his roots. The result in this revival of Ben Harrison’s production for the Highland based Dogstar Theatre Company is a show that retains its original intimacy as it explores Zajac’s deeply personal story about fathers and sons. Through this backdrop it becomes a far bigger universal tale that lays bare the unintended consequences of war in terms of migration...

Citizens Theatre, Glasgow Five stars   Imagine a world where truth doesn’t matter anymore. Then imagine someone who held on to old truths is spied on, hounded and tortured until they kow-tow to the official version and fall in line with everyone else. Welcome to Chris Hannan’s searing new stage version of George Orwell’s visionary novel, which sets out its dystopian store with major resonances of so called democracy now in terms of how dissent on all sides is dealt with.    From the opening bombardment of electronic noise, Dominic Hill’s production brings home the mix of mundanity and terror in Hannan’s adaptation. This comes in the regulation utilitarian blue uniforms worn by Winston Smith and his regimented peers as much as it does from Winston’s final submission to the system following a relentless series of rapid-fire torture scenes. In-between comes the frightening realities of masked men turning up at meetings to remove deviants, and the collective release of a bayi...

Kevin Rowland has never been shy of exposing himself emotionally in song. From his early incarnations of Dexys Midnight Runners almost half a century ago, Rowland has driven a restless musical potpourri of Celtic white Soul that has veered between euphoric and mournful in its mercurial brilliance. Now here he is with the latest edition of his newly rechristened group after a decade as just Dexys with what is hinted as being the grand finale to Rowland’s musical quest.   What we get in this David Holmes produced affair is a Proustian trawl through Rowland’s personal back pages awash with purging and redemption. This forms a companion piece of sorts to Rowland’s candid memoir, Bless Me Father (2025) and accompanying in conversation shows.   From the opening remembrance of the dead end kids he ran with as a Wolverhampton tearaway in ‘My Life in England Pt.1’, Rowland casts himself as an old sage reflecting on his lot by way of well-worn shaggy dog stories of times past. Inbetween...

Òran Mór, Glasgow  Three stars   The double edged sword in the title of Éimi Quinn’s new comedy gradually becomes apparent through the three women at the heart of this opening salvo from A Play, a Pie and Pint’s latest season of lunchtime theatre. Set in the pungently scented lift of a Glasgow high rise, the play pits Lauren as our guide and narrator as she introduces us to her neighbours while preparing for a hen do with her pals.    First up is Pat, who’s been in the block for years, and has an opinion on everyone and everything. Behind her potty-mouthed pontificating, Pat has something precious in her bag she carries with her all the time. Then there is Aaliyah, a heavily pregnant Mother Earth migrant whose devotion to her offspring inspires Lauren to keep an ever-expanding list of exactly why motherhood isn’t for her.    Lauren says she wants a quiet life, though her PVC outfit and the bottles of sticky blue booze she necks beg to differ. As Lauren does...

Dundee Rep Five stars   Like a Busby Berkeley of the Barras, Tony Roper knows how to make a memorable routine. This is why his comic masterpiece set in a 1950s Glasgow washhouse on Hogmanay where four working class women banter the night away has survived almost forty years and umpteen productions since it first appeared in 1987. Since then, it has become a bona fide contemporary classic, with bums on seats guaranteed wherever it plays.    So it goes in this big new touring production led by cast member Louise McCarthy and Ryan Alexander Dewar’s Rerr Terr company in association with Neil Laidlaw Productions, Selladoor and Dundee Rep. With Roper back in the director’s chair, it isn’t hard to see why his celebration of women, community and the collective power of both retains its rapport with audiences, many of whom are likely to be as familiar with the play as the brilliant cast are here.    One mention of Galloway’s mince by old Mrs Culfeathers is enough to sign...

By the time Elizabeth Blackadder (1931-2021) became the first woman to be elected to the Royal Scottish Academy in 1972, the Falkirk born painter and printmaker had already carved out a unique oeuvre of vibrant landscapes and still lives focused on flowers and  objects. Some of this was channelled into the tapestries and rugs contained in Elizabeth Blackadder: A Life in Colour, a new exhibition of Blackadder works that puts the textiles in dialogue with paintings and drawings drawn from the RSA collection. Marking five years since Blackadder’s death, the exhibition at Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh, where the textile works were made, aims to show off Blackadder’s vivid use of colour in her visual language. Blackadder’s relationship with Dovecot dates back to 1966, when Still Life, Tulips (1966) was her first tapestry work. Since then, Dovecot has collaborated with Blackadder on a total of thirty-one tapestries and five rugs. These include Eastern Still Life (1980)...

Royal Lyceum Theatre Four stars    The drums beat loud in this mighty rendering of a 14th century epic Middle Eastern narrative poem. Passed down the centuries in various guises, it is reimagined here from a Syrian version by Palestinian writer/director Bashar Murkus and dramaturg Khulood Basel of their Haifa based Khashabi Theatre. With the seven performers already on stage and welcoming audiences as they arrive, the result over the next life affirming three hours is a gorgeous mash-up of storytelling, dance and a wonderful live score led by drummer Rami Nakhleh and singers Rana Baransi and Abed Zoabi.    The story they tell in Arabic with English surtitles - The Epic of Bani Hilal  or السّيرة الهلاليّ - is an awfully big adventure that takes in battles of love, war and an eternal quest for new lands to call home. Out of this comes a contrary beauty that comes from a joyful and playful delivery by the cast as they act out each chapter o...