Coffee-Table Notes

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh 3 stars It may begin with a growl and a roar behind a frosted-glass fronted cube, but by the time writer/performer Angela Clerkin and director Lee Simpson's quasi-autobiographical study of barely-repressed anger has offloaded some eighty minutes later, something even less cuddly has emerged. If that sounds like heavy weather, don't be too alarmed, as Clerkin's co-production with Improbable Theatre and Ovalhouse is infinitely playful to the point of being overloaded, throwing everything from faux noir stylings and 1970s political cabaret to murder mystery shenanigans and even a sudden burst of Irish dancing into the mix. Dressed in a black lounge suit, Clerkin explains how a stint as an out of work actress turned solicitor's clerk led her on an after-hours adventure in search of the bear that a man on trial for murdering his wife claims is the actual guilty party. As she navigates her way through the big city jungle of Kilburn pubs

4 stars Whoa-whoa-whoa, etc! Don't ever underestimate Mark E. Smith, The Fall's founder, writer, vocalist and sole surviving member since they formed thirty-five years ago. Some may dismiss him as a past his-best drunken parody of his former glories, and while live shows can be inconsistent to the point of umbrage, the hardest working man in showbiz is an agent provocateur and master of of social engineering whose singularly eccentric shtick falls somewhere between Bernard Manning, James Brown and Polish theatre director Tadeusz Kantor, the latter of whom made onstage interventions an art-form just as Smith does. After years of hiring and firing a multitude of members, today's Fall has reached some kind of autumnal stability of sorts, with guitarist Peter Greenway, drummer Keiron Melling and bassist David Spurr surviving in the ranks since 2006, while keyboardist and Smith spouse Elena Poulou probably deserves a medal on all counts for lasting a whole decade.

When Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, it was vindication for a wide and varied career that took the New Jersey born singer from the high-pitched joie de vivre of early doo wop and rock and roll hits, to score unlikely favour with the 1970s Northern Soul scene, before singing the title track for the soundtrack of one of the most successful musical films ever made. None of this might have happened if seven year old Francesco Stephen Castellucio had been taken by his mother to see another Frankie, with the second name of Sinatra, at the Paramount Theatre in New York. It was there and then that little Frankie recognised his destiny, and decided to pursue a singing career and become a star. It would be another decade before Valli made his public debut, when he was asked up onstage for a guest spot by local act, The Variety Trio. The band included future Four Seasons Nick Macioci and Tommy DeVito, and once The V

Tron Theatre, Glasgow 4 stars On a bare stage seated beneath striplights, actor Damir Todorovic is wired up to a lie detector. Sitting opposite him is fellow performer Pauline Goldsmith, who wields a pen over the graph paper that charts Todorovic's responses to the questions she asks him about events preserved in a twenty-year old diary. The needles that judder into life with each response are subsequently beamed onto a large screen behind the pair, allowing the audience to scrutinise the possible fictions of their exchange. Serbian by birth, and well known to Scottish audiences from his appearances in several of Vanishing Point's large-scale works, Todorovic has already told us he was a soldier in the 1993 Balkan War, and wants to see if it's possible to live without lies. Whether his line of inquiry succeeds or not depends on whether you believe some of the uncomfortable details which Goldsmith's interrogation throws up in what initially looks more

Tron Theatre, Glasgow 3 stars What would happen if the revolution became reduced to a series of letter-writing parties that gathered the converted together under the guidance of the sort of perma-grinning cheerleader normally the preserve of high street charity muggers? Then what if it turned out that said cheer-leader had missed the point enough to be sidelined from the cause? As an audience of ten or so 'pioneers' are ushered into a meeting room with name tags and enforced jollity intact, these are exactly the sort of questions being asked in director Rob Jones and writer Michael O'Neill's all too timely look at the politics of protest for a younger generation in a post-ideological age. Our hostess is Layla, the pyjama-clad evangelist for the Need Nothing movement led by the guru-like Sam, who wants everyone to move into a global village in Peru. Layla's nemesis is Councillor Robert Cairns, her former ally and inspiration, who now wants to counterac

Tramway, Glasgow until June 30 th 4 stars One only has to look at the names on the spines of the books projected on the two large side-screens that flank a central one in Stephen Sutcliffe's large-scale film installation to get where he's coming from. Philosopher Jacques Derrida, semiotician Roland Barthes, a book of Christopher Logue poems and even a DVD of Shelagh Delaney-scripted, Albert Finney starring 1960s Brit-curio 'Charlie Bubbles' are all in there in a mash-up of post-modern pop cultural ephemera. Drawn from Sutcliffe's personal archive of sound, broadcast and spoken-word recordings dating back to a childhood in which he clearly didn't get out much, Outwork was inspired by sociologist Erving Goffman's book, 'Frame Analysis' and was originally produced for the Margaret Tait Award. Beginning with hummed snatches of 'The Internationale' and ending with the opening guitar riff of 'Gloria', Sutcliffe juxtaposes little

Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, until June 23 rd 3 stars X marks the spot in Inverleith House's latest show in which a contemporary artist responds to work in the RBG's Archival holdings of botanical-based art. Arriving just in time for the sun to belatedly shine, and running alongside 'Nature Printed', featuring actual examples from the RBG collection, Canadian-born, Glasgow-based Ciara Phillips beams down a series of groovy-looking screenprints brandishing vivid colour blocks that gets back to nature in homage to publications by eighteenth century nature printer Johannes Kniphof. Amidst the abstractions, there are blurry archive images of hourglasses and lush, lime-coloured landscape splodges amidst the flora and fauna. The show's centrepiece finds the gallery's central column of walls wallpapered with sa blanket of watery, ice-blue and white prints, on top of which is draped a banner-like large-scale print of two yellow pencils