Coffee-Table Notes

Citizens Theatre, Glasgow 3 stars Opening Hamlet with the ‘To Be Or Not To Be’ soliloquy is a risky strategy. Shakespeare’s most famous riff on life, the universe and everything puts the spotlight squarely on the capabilities or otherwise on whichever young turk has braved the title role. Having the dynamic and versatile Andrew Clark as Hamlet hold his palm aloft a burning candle to see what pain feels like suggests he’s a more every-day self-absorption than is usual. Director Guy Hollands goes further in this big, black production, set on what looks part walled arena, part run-down dockland, where, while retaining a loose hotch-potch of period trappings, he attempts to debunk the clichés of set-text routines. Out goes the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern double act, leaving only Sam Heughan’s gentrified Guildenstern to carry the can, while Samantha Young similarly highlights Ophelia’s retreat into infantilism in a more close-up form. How the court scenes came to be back-dropped by w

Oran Mor, Glasgow 4 stars When Sean meets Lisa, worlds collide on every level. Sean lives alone in a high rise flat full of boxes, bare bulbs and a panoramic view of the city’s bright lights, and communicates in that strong-silent-type manner patented by the west of Scotland male. Lisa, on the other hand, is never backward in coming forward, a trait left over from her Viking ancestors, who knew exactly what it means to live in the dark, and may go some way to explaining their penchant for invading seemingly brighter countries. Lisa sees something of Knut Hamsun’s novels in Sean’s demeanour, and is tellingly possessed by a hunger to connect with someone who, from one Weegie to another, just might be exactly like her. In this first of four lunchtime collaborations between A Play, A Pie And A Pint and Paines Plough before they transfer to London, David Greig’s beautiful little may-be love story begins full of awkward comic charm before opening out onto a world infinitely more f

Oran Mor, Glasgow 4 stars The all too brief summer season of abbreviated classics that have graced Oran Mor over the last month has shown how apparently difficult material can be presented in fresh ways yet remain faithful to the works’ complexities. Mary McCluskey’s hour-long version of one of Shakespeare’s most grown-up plays is a fitting finale, managing to convey with only three actors the contrary tale of love and war with fury, passion and, as befits any Kenny Miller production, bucket-loads of style. It’s also extremely sexy. Opening with Andrew Clark’s Roman emperor and Lorna McDevitt’s Egyptian queen at either end of the catwalk that has been in place for all four shows, laying prostate between them is Candida Benson, who, as go-between, chorus, clown and narrator, must carry the bulk of the action. It’s a feat she achieves with winsome, barefoot abandon, as the lovers never quite resolve how to conquer nations as well as each other’s hearts. Clark and McDevitt go at the

Tron Theatre, Glasgow 4 stars Harry Horse was without doubt the most savage political cartoonist of his era. The untimely and controversial death at the start 2007 of the artist formerly known as Richard Horne has made his increasingly angry back catalogue the stuff of legend. The premise of Tam Dean Burn’s hour-long homage is simple. Present each of Horse’s fifty two cartoons which appeared in the Sunday Herald throughout 2006 as a rolling slide show, with Burn himself mouthing the accompanying texts penned by Horse, and let them stand unadorned as the most visceral documents of modern times. The result, underscored by the insistent electronic throb of Keith McIvor’s sound collage, is an intensely powerful piece of polemic and poetry that doesn’t just shove its targets around like much satire. Rather, it lacerates Blair, Bush, Brown and co with a mixture of increasingly personalised venom married to classical and pop cultural allusions born at punk’s crucible. Dressed in a white h

Perth Theatre, 4 stars You can all but smell the testosterone in Middle Ground Theatre Company’s adaptation of James Kennaway’s post World War Two novel of rivalry and power games in a Highland barracks where officers idle their days and nights away in whisky-fuelled high-jinks. Cock of the roost is acting Colonel Jock Sinclair, an old school roughneck trained in the school of hard knocks, who’s of the defiantly macho breed that believes everything and anything can be solved over a dram. Jock’s power-base is knocked asunder by the arrival of Basil Barrow to take over his command. A blue-blooded, soft-drink sipping southerner, Barrow’s eye for detail is the antithesis of Sinclair’s talent for ingratiating himself with the overgrown lads of the officer’s mess. What follows in Michael Lunney’s production is a brilliantly observed war of attrition between two men in uniform still learning how to re-define and express themselves in the uneasy peace-time they’re now living in. For all it

Last week’s resignation of The Tron Theatre’s artistic director Gregory Thompson was, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, very much a case of losing one director being a misfortune, but losing two appearing very careless indeed. Citing ‘the expanding programme of his own company’, last Wednesday’s press release said in reference to A and BC, ‘and consequent touring commitments, coupled with the obligations of a young family,’ Thompson’s announcement came immediately following his return from a two month tour of America. Coming two weeks before the theatre’s co-production with Glasgay on a stage adaptation of Louise Welsh’s novella, Tamburlaine Must Die, Thompson’s explanation is sound enough reason enough for moving on. Given such ongoing commitments, however, last week’s events were pretty easy to spot a mile off. Because, while there seems to be genuine regret at Thompson’s passing, in the wider theatre community there is little surprise. Thompson’s departure comes almost a year to

Kibble Palace, Glasgow 3 stars Othello is one of Shakespeare’s more puzzling plays. Is the Moor general wedded to Desdemona a victim of institutionalised racism? Or is Iago’s obsessive ire and calculated power-playing motivated by the kind of irrational jealousy that afflicts any schemer in high office when faced with a sexy, incorruptible and charismatic boss? Either way, the murderous result is the same. Director Gordon Barr’s latest contribution to this year’s Bard In The Botanics season doesn’t really explore either route in any depth. Rather, it plays the text faithfully enough to reveal a lot of angry men, but never explains how they worked themselves up into such a state. It’s strong enough to survive such a one-dimensional approach, so it’s revealed as a straight, no-frills political thriller. Maybe that’s enough. Because, watching Paul Cunningham’s Iago take advantage of the highly-strung paranoia of military relationships conducted by an ‘outsider’ such as Othello, an a