Coffee-Table Notes

When Brett Bailey's Third World Bunfight company presented Exhibit B as part of the 2014 Edinburgh International Festival, the show's twenty-first century reimagining of colonial era human zoos, when black Africans were shown in front of their white thrill-seeking masters as novelty artefacts to gaze on, garnered a slew of five-star reviews. As someone who gave Exhibit B a five star review in this magazine, I was aware before I saw the show's series of tableau vivant of the accusations of racism that had been levelled against Bailey, a white South African artist. These accusations came from protesters in various countries where Exhibit B had been seen, as well as in Britain, where it was set to transfer from Edinburgh to the Barbican's Vaults space in London this week. Today's announcement by the Barbican that their week-long showing of Exhibit B has been cancelled following protests on the first night that saw the road outside the venue blocked comes following an o

John Byrne hates exposition. In his own writing in now classic works   such as The Slab Boys and Tutti Frutti, his characters talk in baroque   flourishes of pop cultural patois that ricochet between them. In his   new version of Chekhov play, Three Sisters, however, which opens next   week at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow before embarking on a national   tour, tackling such rich but exposition-laden source material hasn't   been easy. “I love Chekhov,” Byrne says over a Cappuccino in Edinburgh's Filmhouse   cafe, “but you can only capture about a third of it, because it's   Russian. I thought The Seagull particularly was all exposition, all   that 'I dress in black because of my father's death' sort of thing,   which we're so unused to, characters describing themselves and saying   what's happening to them. So I wouldn't normally like that, but all   life is in Chekhov's plays. “I chose an old literal translation of Three Sisters by some woman I  

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars Wannabe gangsters take note. It's unlikely that anyone will ever be able to take you seriously again after DC Jackson's scurrilous comedy set in the mankiest of Ayrshire pig-farms. Here, would-be good fellas Dominic and Skootch are holed up with tabloid hack Bruce as the mother of all shoot-outs accidentally ensues. When smooth-talking MacPherson turns up, his patter is just a curtain-raiser to what happens when emigre Ulster Loyalist Johnny Glendenning finally shows face. If this sounds like standard sub-Hollywood tough guy fare, Jackson's play is delivered with such potty-mouthed filter-free glee as it piles up the bodycount that it becomes both shocking and hilarious. While it is a study too of West Coast of Scotland machismo and the perceived glamour of being part of a gang, Jackson’s dialogue is peppered throughout with the geekiest of pop cultural detritus. Computer games, mobile phone apps, the restorative powers of Aswad, B

Mull Theatre Three stars On the vague off-chance that anyone has woken up in Utopia this morning, it might be worth visiting the fictional town in Chris Lee's new play for Mull Theatre to find out the extent to which such Shangri-las can be spoilt. Loosely based on Andorra, by German writer and contemporary of Bertolt Brecht, Max Frisch, Lee gives this epic yarn a contemporary spin that goes way beyond his source's analogies to his own era's cultural prejudices to capture something utterly current. Ushered in with the sort of triumphalist fervour  that would make a VisitScotland ad look understated, Alasdair McCrone's production sets Lee's play in a walled city which, while looking like an ancient Greek ruin, also oddly resembles McCaig's Tower in Oban. Here a former war journalist drowns his sorrows while his adopted daughter Anissah, seemingly an interloper from a land regarded with suspicion, works the local bar. Forever close to her brother Johan, played by

SSE Hydro, Glasgow Four stars Given that it was the over 60s demographic that swung the victory for the No camp in this week's Scottish independence referendum, it's something of a surprise that Scotland's most curmudgeonly OAP double act, Jack and Victor, didn't lay their cards on the table last night in the first of their twenty-one night stadium-sized stage version of Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill's scurilous TV sit-com. In the end politics didn't matter  much in a show that started off simply enough as a series of routines were played out across Navid's open all hours corner shop and the legendary Clansman bar where Gavin Mitchell's bar-man Boabby held court to Winston, Tam, Isa and Navid. Once we're ushered into Jack and Victor's front room, however, things take a turn for the meta, as Kiernan and Hemphill take full advantage of the live arena for a series of self-referential gags that resemble something Pirandello might hav

The Arches, Glasgow Three stars “By taking away my choice,” Marcus Roche soft-soaps his audience at one point, “you've given me my freedom.” Such sentiments may sound like they've been crafted by the snake-oil salesman this writer, director, performer and self-starting multi-tasker extraordinaire resembles. Given that Roche was actually preparing to flog off his vote for today's Scottish independence referendum as he toadied up to us with such gloriously contrary platitudes, however, he's pretty much on the money whatever the result. Of course, as with the real-life ebay shyster who attempted to sell his vote online, no back-handers were actually pocketed in Roche's one-night only extrapolation of just how much money talks when politics is involved.  Darting from laptop to lectern beneath two opposing flags of convenience in his contribution to the Arches' Early Days Referendum Festival, Roche does his bit for internationalism by way of soundbites from French a

Tramway, Glasgow, Sept 26th-28th When the Arika organisation took a side-step from curating experimental music festivals in a now booming scene they laid the groundwork for with their Instal and Kill Your Timid Notion events, the more holistically inclined series of themed Episodes they embarked on seemed to chime with a renewed hunger for ideas and seditious thought. While Episodes still featured performances and screenings, they were consciously not made the centrepiece of events that involved discussions and debates which questioned the relationship between artist and audience, and indeed the structures of such events themselves. In Episodes 4 and 5, Arika concentrated on the musical and political liberation expressed by the black community through jazz, and a similar state of transcendence found for the Queer and Trans community through the House Ballroom scene. Episode 6 in part fuses both experiences in Make A Way Out of No Way, which over three days looks beyond the nuclear fami