Coffee-Table Notes

The first time Paul Henderson Scott saw Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits, Sir David Lyndsay's sixteenth century epic that took the rise out of church, state and gentry, it was a life-changing experience. That production of Scotland's oldest known surviving play, as knocked into textual shape by Robert Kemp, was seen by Scott at the 1948 Edinburgh International Festival. Then, as he related to National Theatre of Scotland artistic director Vicky Featherstone several weeks ago, he couldn't believe he'd never seen it before. Here was a play that represented his culture, his history and his mother tongue in a way that nothing else had in his experience. Since Scott's eureka moment, he has gone on to see it in home-grown productions in 1949, 1973 and in 1985, when Tom Fleming's production for the now defunct Scottish Theatre Company played at the Edinburgh International Festival. The production was revived the following year at Glasgow's Theatre Roy

Various venues 4 stars It's 4.55pm on a rainy midsummer solstice, and at assorted hubs around Scotland, the logo on the National Theatre of Scotland website looks suspiciously like the BBC's old trade test transmission, cheesy muzak and all. By 5.01pm, however, actress Sally Reid is being beamed in from Perth Theatre, where she is playing the venue's ghost in a fittingly theatrical opening monologue for this unprecedented live streaming of two hundred and thirty-five bite-size plays broadcast over twenty-four hours across the world. Ten minutes later, Tam Dean Burn is wearing a toy theatre on his head beside the Clyde with a glove puppet salmon on one hand and the rush-hour traffic behind while Beltane style percussion is beaten out. Within the hour we've seen a swimming pool choir, a Gaelic internet dating yarn and several contemporary dance troupes from all parts of Scotland and beyond. There's brilliant work too by Douglas Maxwell and Dundee Rep,

Dundee Rep 4 stars It's a somewhat disarming experience seeing a second home-grown production of Dennis Kelly's brutal two-hander within weeks of Glasgow's Citizens theatre's own. Set in a nuclear fallout shelter where Mark and Louise might just be the last two people alive following an apparent apocalypse, Kelly's drama sets up an increasingly ugly power-play between Mark's geeky outsider figure and his vivacious and popular work-mate that is at times harrowing to watch. Director Emma Faulkner takes the audience off-site to a concrete props store that gives the action the gritty, grimy feel required and leaves both actors with nowhere to hide. Pulsed by the low hum of Philip Pinsky's sound design, things start quietly enough, as Tony McGeever's Mark attempts to explain to Helen Darbyshire's Louise exactly what happened before and after the blast. Before long, though, hidden agendas come to the fore as it becomes clear that the game M

The Captain's Rest, Glasgow Tuesday June 7th 2011 Heroism comes in many forms, but Paul Simpson's ongoing awfully big adventure fronting his reconstituted, reconfigured and on this showing on the first date of a short UK tour thoroughly reignited Wild Swans nom de plume is a sublime experience that falls somewhere between a vintage copy of Boy's Own magazine brought to life and an indie supergroup in excelcis. In a set gleaned largely from new album, The Coldest Winter For A Hundred Years, it's a call to arms from the off, with Simpson's lyrics a one-man campaign against the worst excesses of urban regeneration, his beloved Liverpool in particular seen through a mix of rose-tinted yearning for the days that defined him, and an impassioned despair at the 'dark satanic shopping malls' that have wiped out the fields where Simpson used to play. Set to the shimmeringly busy jangle of former Brian Jonestown Massacre guitarist Ricky Mayme - fresh

Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh until July 3rd 2011 4 stars The relationship between the title of the first museum-based show by Leeds-born sculptor Houseago and the work itself may not be immediately apparent. It's taken from 'Transmission', the urgent post-punk anthem released in 1979 by Joy Division, who implored listeners to 'Dance, dance, dance to the radio'. Wander through the sepulchral marble-white hemp, iron and wood structures possessing Inverleith's ground floor, however, and something monumental grabs hold. It's as if the imposing dome at the centre of a room littered with sawn-off remnants of trees or the bulbous giant leg in the next are paying tribute to the aftermath of some Ballardian dystopia, marking time until whatever happens next. The masks, the walk-through wooden gate and the giant fox-head in the basement further suggest a society getting back to basics. Either that or totems of some primitive c

Dundee Contemporary Arts until July 31st 2011 4 stars If the world is a circle without a beginning and nobody knows where it really ends ('laa-la-laaa-la'), as a zenned-out Hal David once wrote to a Burt Bacharach choon for the big-screen Shangri-la of Charles Jarrott's 1973 remake of 'Lost Horizon', then both Nina Rhode and Cara Tolmie's worlds seem to be on a permanent loop in these wonderfully complimentary shows. For Glasgow-based Tolmie, this comes via two films, one an actual loop of a Death Valley landscape viewed from a speeding car, the other a hand-crafted pop-up toy theatre made with a shoebox, some sticky-back plastic and some close-up cut-outs of a similarly mountainous mural and a window that blows hot and cold. Out of this comes a narrative both domestic and epic, set as it is in a room with a very special view. In her first ever UK solo show, Berlin-based Rhode's series of spinning wheels, cut out shapes and endless mirror im

4 stars This latest excursion in Drew Wright's ongoing adventure in ethno-celtic vocal loops marries two extended pieces back to back on a cassette that comes in a plain brown hand-stamped envelope and wrapped in an offcut of tweed. Where 'Whither?' eventuality morphs into snatches of al green's 'Take me To The River,', flipside 'Wither,' a kind of dub version of the former, comes over more biblical in its bullfrog mantra. The length of both tracks allows Wright's extrapolations space enough to breathe in an ideal accompaniment for Sunday afternoon strolls up Arthur's Seat with bigger hills in mind. There's even a plaster in case you trip on the crags. ends