Coffee-Table Notes

Stills, Edinburgh, 6th February-9th April At first glance, two old women gossiping on a half-demolished street may not have much to do with the group of nymph-like waifs in swimsuits draping themselves across the branches of a tree in synchronised unison. Seen alongside each other as in this two-part exhibition at Stills, however, the documentary photographs of Joseph McKenzie and images by Fred Daniels taken from the collection of choreographer Margaret Morris fuse social history and artistic archive in fascinating counterpoint. Where Joseph McKenzie was regarded as the father of Scottish photography up until his death in 2015, the shapes thrown in Morris' 1920s world were the epitome of abstraction applied to everyday life. Both, in their own ways, were radical pioneers. “The Margaret Morris collection is a really early example of an artist recognising the importance of documentation,” Stills director Ben Harman says,“while Joseph McKenzie's photographs are early e

Coronation Street may look like the end of the world to some, but for Chris Gascoyne, his time on the iconic TV soap has in part been a platform which has allowed him to explore other avenues. While on the one hand Gascoyne has notched up some seventeen years “more on than off,” playing Peter Barlow, son of the ever-present Ken, in the red-brick Wetherfield limbo, he has also developed a parallel theatre career. This has taken him to the National Theatre, the Royal Court and now to Glasgow in the Citizens' Theatre's new production of Samuel Beckett's dystopian masterpiece, Endgame. Performing alongside his long-term Corrie colleague David Neilson in co-production with the newly-established Manchester venue, HOME, Gascoyne plays Clov, the doting servant to Neilson's blind and ruthless master, Hamm. With Hamm unable to walk and Clov incapable of sitting, the pair's sparring is punctuated by the dustbin-dwelling appearance of Hamm's parents, Nag and Nell, in a b

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow Three stars When second year acting students from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland performed Romeo and Juliet a couple of weeks ago, it may have been their first introduction to classical tragedy. Seen next to John Ford's seventeenth century gore-fest, however, Shakespeare's play must look pretty prim to the other half of the year's ensemble who perform Ford's masterpiece this week. The same iron bed is there in Gareth Nicholls' production to help illustrate consummation of the play's doomed young lovers' affair. It starts similarly enough too, with over-exciteable boys sparring and confessing all while the object of their affections preens herself impassively in front of a full-length mirror. The fact that Ford's lead starlets, Giovanni and Annabel, are brother and sister, makes this an infinitely more grown-up affair. All of Nicholls' eight-strong ensemble grab hold of Ford's taboo-busti

The arrival of new work by Heathcote Williams is always a cause for a very revolutionary kind of celebration. In certain circles, after all, Williams has long been regarded as the conscience of a very fractured nation. A key figure in London's 1960s counter-culture, as a writer, his first book, The Speakers, was an impressionist portrait of the characters who brought Speaker's Corner to colourful life in Hyde Park. An adaptation of the book was later staged by Joint Stock Theatre Company. As an activist, Williams was a prime mover in the 1970s squatting and graffiti scenes that graced the streets of London's then run-down Notting Hill district, and he co-founded the alternative nation of Freestonia. As a playwright, Williams penned AC/DC, a critique of the anti-psychiatry techniques pioneered by R.D. Laing, and wrote The Local Stigmatic, which was championed by Al Pacino. In Hancock's Half Hour, Williams explored the debilitating curse of fame through the final m

It's only too fitting that the debut release from the newly constituted VoidoidARCHIVErecords comes in a silver plastic bag. There are few artists other than the label's founder, artist Jim Lambie, after all, who have taken the Warhollian pop-art dream and used it for his own ends quite so convincingly. The label was born of activities in Lambie's Glasgow-based Poetry Club over the last three years, which has seen several generations of underground movers and shakers perform there ever since he opened it to host a show by Richard Hell in 2012. The likes of Factory superstar Gerard Malanga, poetry evangelist John Giorno and Patti Smith have all performed inside The Poetry Club's bijou confines, as have Felt frontman Lawrence, Primal Scream, Young Fathers and Teen Canteen. This double 7'' limited edition of 100 was released last month to coincide with the Club's multi-media night, Paraphernalia. Elara Caluna are the Glasgow-based duo of Benedict Salter a

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars You could have heard a pin drop when Valerie told her story midway through Amanda Gaughan's revival of Conor McPherson's brooding 1997 masterpiece. As played by Lucianne McEvoy, Valerie is the most unassuming of strangers, embraced into the fold of a west of Ireland boozer where Jack, Jim, Finbar and barman Brendan hold court. In self-imposed exile from Dublin, over the course of one dark night Valerie rubs up against the men's shared experience and peacockish attempts to impress her. The latter comes in the form of a series of whisky-fuelled supernatural yarns that conjure up an assortment of apparitions that Valerie too falls prey to in the most devastating of ways. Such a simple set-up is brought to life with exquisitely low-key power on Francis O'Connor's desolate set. At the play's start, rain batters down beside the telegraph poles beyond the pub's four walls as the sound of a solitary fiddle that

When iconic trumpeter Miles Davis released his Bitches Brew album in 1970, the record's use of electronic instruments and studio editing broke the mould for for many jazz aficionados even as it confounded others more used to the artform being primarily a live affair captured in the moment. Either way, it's notable that out of the dozen players that made up Davis' supergroup gathered for the recording, not one of them was a woman. Almost half a century on, a new night for female jazz and improv musicians has co-opted the title of Davis' of-its-time opus to correct such a gender imbalance. Co-founded in the summer of 2015 by saxophonist Sue McKenzie and double bass player Emma Smith, Bitches Brew is a bi-monthly night that takes place at the small but perfectly formed Jazz Bar on Chambers Street, across the street from the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. The idea was to provide a platform for female players who, despite working in a more left-field free and impr