Coffee-Table Notes

Bharatiya Ashram, Dundee Four stars The central wisdom of playwright David Greig and composer and songwriter Gordon McIntyre's lo-fi musical rom-com as gleaned from an underground car park ticket machine is that change is possible. With this in mind, director Ros Philips takes such everyday philosophy by the scruff of the neck and runs with it to blazes in her Dundee Rep Ensemble production that forms the company's latest community tour. Where the play was originally performed in 2008 by two actors, Philips does it with a cast of eight, as thirty-something lost souls Bob and Helena's wild weekend after falling together in an Edinburgh bar is charted by a cagoule-clad chorus who double up as assorted waifs, strays and hangers-on the pair meet en route. While this may lose something in terms of manic urgency, it also fleshes out what begins as a drunken one-night stand and ends with what might just be a dream come true. As they pause for breath inbetween scampering fr

When a young tree surgeon called Richard Vallis responded to a poster by learning disabilities charity, The Action Group, it set in motion a chain of events that not only changed his life, but altered the cultural landscape of Edinburgh forever. It was the late 1970s, and The Action Group, set up in 1976 by parents of children and adults with learning disabilities, were looking for volunteers to work with them. Lancashire-born Vallis had recently moved to the city, and, wanting to meet new people in the place he still calls home, thought he'd chance his arm. Today, Lung Ha's Theatre Company, which was formed as a direct result of Vallis' involvement with The Action Group, celebrates its thirtieth anniversary as one of the UK's leading exponents of inclusive arts working with performers with learning disabilities. While an informal celebration will take place next week, this weekend sees the opening of Lung Ha's latest production. Thingummy Bob is a new play

Liquid Room, Edinburgh Four stars The last time Godspeed You! Black Emperor played Edinburgh was in 1998, when the Quebec-sired nontet played only their second ever UK show at the tiny Stills Gallery on Cockburn Street at the behest of the short-lived but pioneering leftfield music promoters, The House of Dubois. Given the explosive nature of the band's extended strings and guitar-led instrumentals, the venue's private view size speakers were duly blown, though not before neighbours alerted the local constabulary regarding the impending apocalypse below. Seventeen years on, not much has changed with Godspeed's template. As the now eight-piece ensemble of two bassists, two drummers, three guitarists and lone fiddler Sophie Trudeau gradually flesh out an opening violin and bass motif, there's still the same scratched-out projections with the word 'Hope' on it that top and tails an epic two-hour suite of slow-burning thunder that move between the martial and the m

North Edinburgh Arts, Edinburgh Three stars Bells chime and voices sing in what sounds like a mix of celebration and mourning at the opening of Annie George's solo play, performed by herself during the closing stages of a short tour following its Edinburgh Festival Fringe run. As we see projections of George writing out her own name at the bottom of her family tree, a very personal quest for identity ensues as she dramatises her inquiry into her own history through the voices of her ancestors who become witnesses to a world in turmoil. The starting point for this is the life and work of George's grand-father, Paduthottu Mathen John, whose portrait is projected as George adopts his persona to illustrate her hand-me-down legacy. She does this too through snapshots of her mother and father as her family eventually move to the west and a less turbulent way of life than in both pre and post colonial India. There is considerable charm in George's impressionistic labou

Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh Three stars The story of Hector MacDonald is one of the least sung tales in British military history. For those who engineered this one-time nineteenth century war hero's downfall, this is possibly with good reason. David Gooderson's play, first seen at the Finborough Theatre in London in 2013 as So Great A Crime, and revived here for an extensive tour in this co-production between Eden Court, Inverness, the Mull-based Comar organisation and Ed Littlewood Productions, makes this abundantly clear.   Born in the Black Isle, Gaelic-speaking crofter's son MacDonald rose through the ranks to become Fighting Mac, a terrier-like warrior of the Second Afghan War who eventually became a Major General, serving in what was then Ceylon. Here, among a more leisured officer class, MacDonald was vilified by his peers, who eventually brought him down with accusations of inappropriate behaviour. In a story where the truth of what actually happene

On Tuesday I attended a meeting of City of Edinburgh's Culture and Sport Committee. I was there in my capacity as a member of CEC's Music is Audible working group, set-up a year ago following a tsunami of dissent concerning the capital's attitude towards live music during a meeting of the city's musical community at the Usher Hall under the banner Live Music Matters. One of the main issues raised at LMM was that of noise complaints. CEC's current legislation dictates that live amplified music must remain inaudible beyond the four walls of where it is being performed. Many argue that this favours a complainant. While outside of John Cage any notion of music being inaudible is an absurdity, such legislation isn't made any more credible by CEC officers not being trained to measure sound in any meaningful scientific way. This has made for some full, frank and very necessary exchanges between music professionals and CEC officers. The culmination of this proc

Customs House, Edinburgh Four stars The lost-looking sailor who opens the door into one of Leith's most grandiloquent buildings where Grid Iron Theatre Company's tenth anniversary staging of vignettes from Jim Crace's food-absorbed novel awaits may look like he's stepped off a ghost ship, but there's something even more haunting beyond. From Johnny Austin and Charlene Boyd's sexy Addams Family style couple who top and tail the show with some of its more wildly erotic imaginings, to the over-riding and all-pervading sense of melancholy that runs throughout Ben Harrison's production, life, death, sex, loss, mortality and everything inbetween are served up in a way designed to gorge on. Navigating the capacity audience of just forty around the building through a network of rarely occupied rooms prior to a short Scottish tour, the action veers from staircase erotica to an array of settings and situations, with each tale of the unexpected brought vividly