Coffee-Table Notes

Vic Godard is running late, and former Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook isn't happy. It's three nights before tonight's live Subway Sect session on Marc Riley's BBC 6Music show prior to a long weekend of Scottish dates, and, after driving across London, the band's veteran crooner and wordsmith has been put well and truly in the dog-house by his new musical director. More to the point, in true punk rock style, Cook isn't in the mood to talk to the Herald, and would rather set up his drum-kit. Godard blames himself. “He's not very happy with me,” he mutters sheepishly as a big bass drum appears to explode behind him along with it's owner's temper. “I'm not the most popular person in the room. Paul's really keen on punctuality. He says we need every minute we can get.” By Godard's own admission, Cook might have a point. Subway Sect played a London show the other week as part of what's proving to be a prolific patch for a band or

Dundee Rep 4 stars It’s not every show that finds its cast serving square crisps to the audience as they enter a noisy auditorium that has a full band set-up gracing a mocked-up pub function room venue. Yet that’s exactly how disabled company Graeae launch into their Ian Dury inspired musical, co-produced with the New Wolsey Theatre, which goes for a full-pelt recreation of the spit and sawdust aesthetic that existed before Lloyd-Webberisation turned everything into soulless cash cow spectacle. At one point there’s even a cheeky nod to Mamma Mia, a show with similar fringe roots as this 1979-set yarn about die-hard Dury-ites Vinnie and Colin, who singularly fail to get to see their idol in residence at Hammersmith Odeon during the height of his chart success. Taking in attitudes to death, sex, prejudice and low-rent ambition during the early days of Thatcherism, Paul Sirett’s script may look simple, but, as with Dury’s lyrics, which are beamed out on back-projections

Family matters are at the heart of David Suchet's work just now. That's certainly the case in Suchet's current pre West End tour of Eugene O'Neill's masterpiece, Long Day's Journey Into Night, which arrives in Glasgow next week. In O'Neill's Pullitzer Prize winning semi-autobiographical epic, the actor best known for his small-screen portrayal of Agatha Christie's Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, plays James Tyrone Senior, the Connecticut patriarch of his dysfunctional clan. It's a mighty role for any actor to rip into, but it's one that Suchet is squaring up to as unflinchingly as anything else he's tackled. “In my forty-three year career I think this has been my most challenging role to date,” Suchet admits, sitting backstage in Milton Keynes. “It's the most challenging piece of writing I've ever had to perform. I compare it to being like playing Bach's organ works with everything else being like a Strauss

Perth Theatre 4 stars The story of the making of Gone With The Wind is as epic as the big-screen adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s thousand-page novel itself. Ron Hutchinson’s own adventures in the screen trade over thirty-odd years have clearly been channelled into his reimagining of what might have gone on in producer David O Selznick’s office during the fateful week he ditched both script and director. The end result is a relentlessly turbo-charged meeting of bullish but fragile minds, as Selznick puts idealistic script-doctor Ben Hecht and Wizard of Oz director Victor Fleming under lock and key for a five-day marathon where deadlines and desperation go hand in hand. As Hecht’s desire to tell uncomfortable truths about America are over-ridden by Selznick’s need entertain the masses, Hutchinson’s play sets up a neat debate on the tug of love between art and commerce. Personal insecurities too are brought to the fore. While Selznick must prove to his father-in-law, mov

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh 3 stars It may have taken a while for Lung Ha’s Theatre Company to get to the Greeks, but now they’re on it, it looks like near perfect if overdue match. Adrian Osmond’s faithful new take on Sophocles’ tragedy of one young woman’s willingness to die for a cause in the face of misguided power similarly takes advantage of the play’s choral structure to include some twenty-five performers with learning disabilities into the play’s complex web of political and inter-personal constructs without ever looking forced. A wonderful addition here too is the presence of five members of the National Youth Orchestras of Scotland Futures programme, who play Kenneth Dempster’s live score for flute, French horn, clarinet, violin and viola with a dextrous urgency that adds much to the drama. Spread out on Becky Minto’s monumental-looking set and dressed in utilitarian basics that hints at some kind of enforced collectivism, the cast strike heightened poses in t

When Chaz Jankel walked into Ian Dury's dressing room in a pub in Shepherd's Bush one night in the mid-1970s, he wasn't exactly welcomed with open arms. Almost forty years on, however, the legacy of that first meeting between the two men who a couple of years later would take their unholy mix of jazz-funk music hall to the top of the charts with Ian Dury and the Blockheads is still going strong. This should be made doubly clear when Reasons To Be Cheerful, Paul Sirett's play for disabled theatre company Graeae, arrives in Dundee next week as part of its current UK tour. Set in 1979 not long after Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government has been elected, Reasons To Be Cheerful (not to be confused with Martin McArdie's play of the same name for 7:84 Scotland inspired by comedian Mark Steel's book) finds a gang of die-hard Blockheads fans locked out of a sold-out gig at Hammersmith Odeon. Over the course of the night, however, things turn out

1 Good morning Councillors. First of all, I'd like to thank the Committee, on behalf of the Edinburgh Campaign against Public Entertainment Licences changes, for allowing me to speak on their behalf today. It's a pleasure, both for me to have the privilege to represent the group, and to see that the Regulatory committee is taking an issue which actually isn't of it's design so seriously. Things have moved on considerably since the potential misinterpretations of the forthcoming legislation was first brought to Councillor Munn's attention by the Edinburgh campaign. Last week I think the message from Edinburgh's creative community was really brought home at a packed public meeting at Out of the Blue, one of Edinburgh's great independent art-spaces. This led to a very positive dialogue with Councillor Munn and a great deal of press attention, while just yesterday, there was a question raised about the new legislation at First Min