Coffee-Table Notes

Dundee Rep Four stars If ever Scotland needed a big, intelligent state of the nation(s) play to sum up where we're at, it's now. David Greig's three-part Highland-set epic may not be it, but it comes pretty close. First seen in 2000 but only now receiving its Scottish première, Greig's play spans sixty years and three generations of a rural community in a state of social flux, with those both up and downstairs trying to find something to believe in. In 1936, it's the romance of revolution and the Spanish Civil War on one hand, and the pseudo-mystical allure of fascism on the other. By 1974, rock stars are getting their heads together in the country, and by 1996 even the land has been annexed by big business. At the heart of all this are three vivacious and free-spirited young women called Victoria. With all three played by a vibrant Elspeth Brodie, each in different ways is looking for a brave new world, but are still drawn back to the big red house t

Citizens Theatre, Glasgow Four stars From the moment the ten-strong cast of Dominic Hill's mighty staging of Dostoyevsky's epic novel step onto the wide-open, bare-walled stage, there's a gloriously self-conscious theatricality to everything that follows. It's not just the way the actors mill about, putting on bits of costume or plucking at the array of musical instruments that line the back wall before coming to order with a powerful rendition of a Russian orthodox Psalm. It's more to do with the way Adam Best's bald-pated Raskolnikov addresses the audience from the off, laying bare his poverty-stricken intentions of murdering a greedy pawn-broker as some kind of act of rebellion. When Raskolnikov declaims, the ensemble become witness, conscience and confessor as much as the voices of the very private revolution in his head. Chris Hannan's vivid adaptation for this co-production between the Citizens, Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse and the Ro

When David Greig began writing Victoria in 1996, the world was a very different place to how it looks today. Yet if all goes well, Greig's epic tale of three generations of a Highland community might just have matured into something even more significant. Originally produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2000, and now receiving its Scottish premiere at Dundee Rep, Victoria takes place over three time zones, 1936, 1976 and 1996. A large ensemble of actors play some thirty-two characters, at the centre of which are three very different women, all called Victoria. “It's very strange going back to the play after all this time,” says Greig, “but it's also very interesting. There's an extent to it being like meeting one's younger self, and on one level that writer was very gauche, and very different to the writer I am now, but it's also fascinating to see the level of ambition that writer had then. I didn't realise, but there are lines in Victoria tha

Chris Hannan was twenty-one when he first read Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky's bleak tale of one man's descent into murder and madness before having a spiritual reawakening. Then, Hannan was an undoubtedly serious young man lurking around the Penguin Classics section in bookshops as he devoured the entire Dostoyevsky canon alongside other Russian masters. More than three decades on, Hannan has adapted Crime and Punishment for the stage in a major new production which opens at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow next week. “It's a strange timer when you're twenty-one,” Hannan says of his mind-set when he first read Crime and Punishment. “You've got all that paranoia. Sometimes you have this exalted view of things, and you have all this enjoyment of the seamier side of things, so that was perfect for Crime and Punishment. “I've probably read the book about seven times since the first time I read it, and it's something I utterly love. It's hard

Born October 14 th 1948 ; died August 26 th 2013 When Gerard Murphy, who has died of cancer aged 64, returned to his beloved Citizens Theatre in 2012 to appear in Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, no-one had any idea that it would be his final appearance at the theatre that launched his career. Now, however, Beckett's solo tale of an old man raking through his former glories contained on a series of reel to reel tapes looks like an oddly fitting epitaph. Murphy gave a remarkable performance that was a mix of bravura and vulnerability, traits which defined his work over a near forty-year career, be it onstage at the Citz or with the Royal Shakespeare Company or in numerous television and film roles. Gerard Murphy was born in Newry, County Down. As a shy child, he was set to be a musician, but recognised that if he went down that path, he would become even more introverted. Needing to find a voice, he approached his local theatre, thinking that acting was

Liquid Rooms, Edinburgh four stars The irresistible rise of tribute bands over the last few years has made the return of the best Beatles pastiche this side of Oasis inevitable. Originally sired by former Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band stalwart and some-time Monty Python collaborator Neil Innes for sketches on Eric Idle's Rutland Weekend Television show in 1975, The Rutles hit the mainstream via the wickedly observed mock documentary, All You Need is Cash, in 1978. Judging by the authenticity of what are essentially a series of three-minute mash-ups of the Lennon and McCartney songbook, most of the nation's future Brit-pop generation must have watched the film's original screening, because a Brit-pop template is what The Rutles now sound like. With Innes, aka Nasty, and fellow original Rutle, John Halsey, aka Barry, in tow with a new line-up, Innes kicks things off by singing Happy Birthday to an audience member before launching into Hamburg era soundalike, Goose Step Mam

Royal Lyceum Theatre Four stars Watching Samuel Beckett is a bit like listening to Country and Western music. The older you get, it seems, the more you understand where they're coming from. This is likely to have been the case for many who saw all five productions of the Edinburgh International Festival's season of Beckett's non-stage works. This final piece, produced by Dublin's Gate Theatre, finds actor Peter Egan transforming Beckett's brief and at times brutal novella into an extended solo routine to die for. It begins beside a grave and ends with a baby's cry, as Egan's lone figure regales the audience with a life and death yarn that begins with him telling how he associates his brief 'marriage' to a woman he meets on a bench with his father's death. Used to keeping both himself and others at an emotional distance, the affection he feels for the woman he first calls Lulu and later Anna catches him by surprise. Even as he mov