Coffee-Table Notes

In an upstairs hall in Glasgow, the speakers are pumping out an infectious mix of African dance music that proves irresistible to everyone there. Even though no-one's met before this week, the multi-cultural mix of Sri Lankans, Africans, Kurds, Scots and English people are on their feet, shaking their booties for all they're worth. One young man, from Cameroon, only arrived less than half an hour ago, but, encouraged by a quietly enthusiastic Dutch woman, is now at the centre of things, showing everyone how to dance to the rhythms of his country of origin with a sassy mix of pride and elation. What looks and sounds like a microcosm of a global village may have the atmosphere of an after-hours shebeen, but in actual fact, the scene described above took place on a Wednesday afternoon in Govan at the end of a day's rehearsal for a very special theatre project that took place last weekend. The English and Scots are a mix of community workers and performers. The Kurds, Sri

Today’s announcement by the National Theatre of Scotland of their Bank of Scotland Emerge Programme for developing theatre artists and directors follows on from two similar initiatives last year. Then, artists such as novelist and playwright Alan Bissett, performer and writer Molly Taylor and director Amanda Gaughan came through what were then known as the New Directors Placement Programme and the Emerging Artists Attachment Programme. While the component parts of both schemes remain in place, the new catch-all umbrella title gives things a sense of unity as well as acknowledging the sort of crossovers between disciplines which, in the current economic and artistic climate, are more prevalent than ever. While the three emerging directors will or have already worked as assistant directors on major NTS productions, the four emerging directors will focus on developing pieces that will be presented as rough works in progress at Scratch night this coming July. For NTS Art

4 stars It’s de rigeur for Turner Prize winners to play in bands these days, and anyone familiar with Martin Creed’s oeuvre from his 2010 Edinburgh Art Festival show at the Fruitmarket Gallery and accompanying live song-and-dance routine at the Traverse will know what to expect from this most calculated of borderline autistic, OCD auteurs. To whit, in this pre-Olympic run-up to orchestrating all the bells in the country to ring out for three minutes, Creed thrashes out eighteen miniatures of love and hate that fuse the desperate yearning of playwright Sarah Kane and the No Wave minimalism of Glenn Branca with the DIY messthetics of Swell Maps and the brattish cartoon petulance of Jilted John. Bookended by ‘Ooh’ and ‘Aah’, which sound-tracked the Fruitmarket lift’s rise and fall, Love To You is a bumpy thirty-seven minute and nine second ride through the confessional ups and downs of fatal attraction, obsession, rejection, frustration and apparent acceptance. If ‘1234’

The Berkeley Suite, Glasgow Sunday June 17th 4 stars Simple Minds as proto techno pioneers? Probably not, but there’s more than a patina of future pomp stadiumistas early instrumental Theme for Great Cities in the opening few minutes of American electronicist and sometime half of the Skaters James Ferraro’s show. With Ferraro hunched over an old Korg synth, the martial rhythms that pulse his first of two extended pieces on this Braw/Cry Parrot/Shaddaz co-promoted show are a long way from the sublime jauntification of last year’s ‘Far Side Virtual’ album. This is a denser, harder sound, awash with glacial keyboard squiggles and Morriconeish chorales conjuring up a wave of analog nostalgia only for it to be pummelled into submission without mercy. Accompanied by The Bodyguard, who appears to be a dreadlocked technician enabling further sonic adventures, Ferraro goes quiet after thirty minutes, almost losing his audience to incessant chit-chat during the longeurs, befor

4 stars In terms of how art happens at a grassroots level, both Creative Scotland and the Scottish Government are as clueless as each other. The importance of Edinburgh Annuale to the city’s independent artistic infrastructure, on the other hand, cannot be overstated. This year’s edition sees some thirty-odd events in co-operatively run spaces such as Embassy, Rhubaba, The Old Ambulance Station, Superclub and Whitespace, as well as an ever-burgeoning network of flats, shops, tunnels and lecture theatres, plus online exhibitions and publications, one of which glories in the name, ‘Jelly and ice cream when Thatcher dies?’ All of which, under the Scottish Government’s idiotic changes to Public Entertainment Licence laws, are technically illegal. But no matter, at least there’s still music. Or is there? Because, while the twenty-four twelve-inch square LP record covers lined up in long-standing indie emporium Avalanche Records blend in perfectly with the racks around th

Dominic Hill is looking relaxed. Perched floppily on a chair on one side of his office, one might even suggest that the expression on the artistic director of the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow's face suggests he is positively pleased with himself. As well he might after his inaugural season of classic plays put Scotland's original international emporium back on the map. Given that Hill cast Cal MacAninch in Harold Pinter's 1970s love triangle play Betrayal, oversaw David Hayman's first appearance at the Citz for more than two decades in an epic take on Shakespeare's King Lear and put a Samuel Beckett double bill of Krapp's Last Tape and Footfalls on the main stage, it's not hard to see why. While Hill is understandably in repose after directing these three shows back to back, the tricky bit comes in how to follow up such a striking calling card. The answer for Hill is to programme another season of expansively inclined work, mainly in co-product

Tramway, Glasgow 4 stars While setting Shakespeare in a psychiatric ward isn’t a new idea, neither is it uncommon for real life patients in such institutions to construct such elaborate self-destructive fantasies with themselves at their fragile world’s centre. Both concepts rub up against each other in the National Theatre of Scotland’s boldly audacious reimagining of the Scottish play, which sees Alan Cumming act out the entire play alone onstage for an hour and three-quarters. Flying without a safety net, Cumming opens himself up physically, mentally and emotionally in a performance of fearless bravura. It starts with Cumming’s character being sectioned and stripped of his twenty-first century apparel by two nurses played almost wordlessly by Myra McFadyen and Aly Craig. With fresh scars embedded into his chest, as Cumming calls to what are both captors and protectors with the Witches ‘When shall we three meet again?’ line, there are hints of a domestic massacre and a possible fai