Coffee-Table Notes

Electric Circus, Edinburgh Sunday March 17 th 2013 4 stars The first time Ulrich Schnauss appeared in Edinburgh, back on Easter Sunday 2008 at the Voodoo Rooms, there wasn't a still body in the room, such was the infectiousness of Schnauss' laptop-generated electronica that has since defined a mashed-up hybrid of dancefloor indie some might call Shoe-Rave. Since then, Schnauss seems to have found his time, as assorted nouveau sonic cathedralists appear to have caught up with him. Schnauss' latest visit tied in with the release of his long-awaited fourth album under his own name, A Long Way To Fall, a deliciously warm concoction which humanises electronica in a way other laptop-based artists fear to tread. This is so even as Schnauss stands over his kit with total concentration, while a a female sidekick stands opposite him, equally rapt over her laptop. The result of all this, with impressionistic films beamed out on the venue's multi-screen set-up behind

It will be something of a homecoming for actress Eileen Walsh takes to the stage in Rob Drummond's new play, Quiz Show, at Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre this coming weekend. It was in that very theatre, after all, that a teenage Walsh first appeared alongside an equally youthful Cillian Murphy in Disco Pigs, Enda Walsh's blistering and poetic coming of age tale that was an Edinburgh Festival Fringe sensation in 1997. Quiz Show also marks the Cork-born actress's return to the city she actually does call home, after originally moving there shortly after Disco Pigs before decamping to London for several years. Quiz Show is Drummond's latest dissection of popular culture that follows on from Bullet Catch and Wrestling. Unlike those two works, which were solo pieces performed by himself, Quiz Show is a fully-fledged play without any onstage appearance by Drummond. Instead, the play looks at today's celebrity obsessed world via a TV game show that doesn't quite

When the film of The Full Monty was released in 1997, there was a delicious irony that it did so a mere week after Tony Blair was elected UK Prime Minister with a landslide victory that saw his New Labour project end eighteen years of Conservative rule. Here, after all, was a commercial feature film about a group of former steel-workers turned strippers in Sheffield who had been thrown on the scrap-heap which Margaret Thatcher's destruction of heap by industries had reduced the steel industry to. Fifteen years on, and with a Conservative/Lib-Dem alliance in Westminster, Simon Beaufoy's original screenplay of The Full Monty has been adapted for the stage. As with the film, Beaufoy's first stage play has proved a feel-good hit even as it deals with some very dark things, about masculinity and the by-products of losing one's livelihood during an era of mass unemployment. “It's a recession comedy,” Beaufoy says. “It was a really grim time, and it was visibl

Dundee Contemporary Arts until April 21 st 2013 4 stars The back catalogue of seventeenth century painter Nicolas Poussin isn't the most obvious frame of reference for German iconoclast Jutta Koether, but when she was taken to see his The Seven Sacraments at the Scottish National Gallery, something clicked. The end result for Koether's first major show in Scotland following an appearance at the DCA as part of the Altered States of Paint group show in 2008 is this large-scale, hopelessly devoted homage/reimagining of Poussin, rebranded and rewired for a post-modern twenty-first century pop age. The fact that Koether's versions of Seasons, four paintings first shown at the Whitney Biennial in New York in 2012, and the more sculptural The Seven Sacraments, created in situ, feature bit part players such as philosopher Jacques Derrida, German racing driver and walking product placement Sebastian Vettel and the Queen adds a playful wit to the pop classicist sheen. The

Summerhall, Edinburgh, until May 18 th 4 stars Up in the Lower Church Gallery end of Summerhall, three very different video works are in motion as part of the best arts space in Edinburgh's latest huge exhibition programme. David Bellingham's 'An Object Revolving Around A Day / An Object Revolving Round Events' is a four-minute animated burl round a yellow sun and a blur moon that recalls a wonkier take on the opening credits of 1970s eco-friendly sit-com, The Good Life. '2013.01.27 – 11.52' is self-christened artistic family collective, Maris,' film of their daily drive from their country home to their studio filmed through their car wind-screen. Best of all is 'Lolcatz', Rachel Maclean's epic day-glo digital mash-up involving Egyptian cat worship, the Tower of Babel, Starbucks and internet meme subtitles. While the cyclic inevitability of Bellingham's piece is as appealingly hypnotic as the accompanying flick-book produced for t

Perth Theatre 4 stars The irresistible rise of budget airlines has made international travel accessible across the social scale. This wasn't the case when John Godber's brittle study of a middle-aged working class couple's broadening horizons first appeared in 1992, when the world seemed a lot bigger to Bet and Al and the generation they represent. Their sense of claustrophobia is accentuated even more in Kenny Miller's striking new co-production between Perth and the Tron in Glasgow by stylising their living room as a white cube which more resembles a prison cell or a hospital ward than a home. With the pair either perched on chairs or else prowling the room looking for an escape route, Bet and Al's mono-syllabic exchanges point up the domestic torpor of what their relationship has become. Emasculated since being made redundant, Al seeks solace by painting lifeless pictures in the garden shed, while Bet buries herself in magazine competitions, trying

Buzzcut is a festival of live art and performance founded in Glasgow by Nick Anderson and Rosana Cade, who explain about the most youthful addition to the city's experimental arts scene and its second year. What's the thinking behind this year's Buzzcut, and how has it developed since the last one? Hello from //BUZZCUT// This year is very community driven. We're having food events each day, hosted by different artists and we've also made sure all the events are fully accessible to everyone. This means the whole festival is 'pay what you can' and all spaces have entrances either on the ground floor or are fully accessible. We're really keen for as many people to be engaging with all the work! You've moved into Mono this year. How has that changed things? We're really excited to be in the Mono/Trongate area as there are so many great things happening around there! Also it's quite a visual art area, so to be bringing performanc