Coffee-Table Notes

In the absence of younger artists willing to become the nation's conscience in the face of ongoing austerity culture, The Pop Group returned in 2010 to reclaim their oppositionist mantle. During the five years since, the Bristol-sired post-punk incendiarists have co-opted PledgeMusic to fund both a reissue of their explosive 1980 compilation album, We Are Time, as well as this year's Citizen Zombie, the first new Pop Group recordings in thirty-five years. Now the quartet of sooth-saying vocalist Mark Stewart, guitarist Gareth Sager, bassist Dan Catsis and drummer Bruce Smith resurface with another campaign for the first ever CD release of their provocatively named 1980 album, their second, For How Much Longer Must We Tolerate Mass Murder? This is accompanied by a separate limited edition release of their equally in-yer-face 1979 single, We Are All Prostitutes. With the album's urgent dispatches such as Forces of Oppression, There Are No Spectators and Rob A Bank lob

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars A snow-ridden pathway flanked at either end by flung-out furniture opens the Traverse's exquisitely realised double bill of seasonal but utterly grown-up plays. By the end of these two short works by Stephen Greenhorn and Rona Munro, however, designer Kai Fischer's gauze-shrouded white landscape has thawed considerably in a slow-burning and emotional show which, despite its title, is riven with all too recognisably human experience. In the first piece, Greenhorn unravels a love affair between two women that rewinds from its final plague to its first flush as it moves from atop Arthur's Seat to a first kiss on Portobello Beach, and all points inbetween. Munro's follow-up work puts a woman in an initially adversarial situation with a real live polar bear. As the Bear channels the inner hunger of those she devours, both try to find their way home, be it in Abbeyhill or a winter wonderland far away. Themes of mortality pul

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow Three stars In the darkness, a Pierrot-faced Ariel pads her way onto a stage littered with a tower of computer monitors. She climbs aloft a box, and with the wave of a hand, conjures up a storm that's beamed out from the screens and made flesh by some very regal looking castaways. So begins Ali de Souza and Katy Hale's look at Shakespeare's late period tale of exile, reconciliation and letting go for Prospero beyond his solitary kingdom, and adult awakenings for his daughter Miranda. There are new freedoms to be explored too for Ariel, as played by Alyssa Wininger, and for Prospero's slave, Caliban, brought to ferocious life by Oystein Schiefloe Kanestrom. First up, however, is a father and daughter heart to heart between Laurence Pybus' Prospero and Lauren Grace's Miranda, stepping among ship-wrecked bodies splayed out on the shore as they go. Among the debris is Sebastian, played here by Jessica Brindle as the si

When artist, writer and musician Kim Gordon announced Assemble as the winner of the 2015 Turner Prize at Tramway in Glasgow on Monday night, she played an absolute doozy. This wasn't just because she mentioned the city's seminal 1980s Sunday psych-punk-indie club, Splash 1, where her old band Sonic Youth played an early Scottish show. While that alone was an acknowledgment of the DIY energy that trickled down the decades into the fertile and incestuous grassroots music and art scenes that now go some way to defining Glasgow, it was more to do with the way Gordon so charmingly fluffed her lines. So instead of saying 'this year', the words “this weird” came out. Once she checked herself, she followed up by initially announcing the award for the 2016 Prize instead of 2015. While Gordon laughed off these glitches with unflustered cool, once she announced Assemble as winners, both goofs couldn't have sounded more appropriate. Even with the Turner's chequer

Citizen's Theatre, Glasgow Four stars Flowers grow wherever Rapunzel goes in Annie Siddons' hippified take on the Brothers Grimm's classic tale. From the day this sparkiest and spikiest of young heroines is abandoned in the woods, life blooms around her. It's a good job, then, that she's taken in by Mother Gothel's tribe of herbalists, whose handiness with exotic tinctures rubs off on their adopted daughter. Once Rapunzel hits puberty, however, Gothel morphs into a jealous sociopath who locks her up in a tower where Rapunzel's already voluminous locks grow into a curtain that hides her from the world. Not that this matters to Rapunzel, who, in her dungarees, geek girl specs and buffed red Doc Marten boots, is more than capable of wrestling soppy Prince Patrizio to the ground when he comes calling. The adventure that follows is a walk on the wild side for them both in Lu Kemp's production, which becomes a psychologist's paradise as Wendy Seag

You could be forgiven for thinking Stephen Greenhorn and Rona Munro have come in from the cold. Tracks of the Winter Bear, the writers' collaborative double bill of plays which opens at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh tonight, sees both writers getting back to their roots with the theatre company where some of their earliest work was seen. The production will also be Greenhorn's first stage play since Sunshine on Leith began its road to international acclaim in 2007. While Munro's plays have been seen at the Traverse more recently, her one-act contribution to this new compendium will be a considerably more intimate affair than the epic sweep of The James Plays, her trilogy of history plays presented at the 2014 Edinburgh International Festival by the National Theatre of Scotland. “Tracks of the Winter Bear is much smaller,” she says, “but it's really magical as well. I'd had this idea for a while about doing a kind of adult Christmas show that had this great

When Madeleine Worrall steps out onto the stage tomorrow night to play the title role in a new stage version of Charlotte Bronte's novel, Jane Eyre, it won't just be the audience at the National Theatre who will be watching. As part of the NT Live initiative, a live feed of Sally Cookson's production, originally seen at Bristol Old Vic in 2014, will be screened simultaneously in more than 650 cinemas across the UK. In Scotland alone some fifty-four cinemas will show the production. All of which sounds more than a little bit daunting for the Edinburgh born actress, who remains onstage throughout the show. “It is a bit terrifying for us,” she admits. “We think we're just doing it in front of the audience in the theatre, but we're actually being seen in cinemas all over. I'm trying not to think about it to be honest, but the NT Live people are being very clear that we're not trying to make a film, but are filming a theatre performance, with everything that go