Coffee-Table Notes

Theatre Royal, Glasgow Three stars In their six year existence, the ever enterprising Sell A Door theatre company have carved something of a niche for themselves by touring brand new productions of hit musicals in a way more readily associated with the heavyweights of commercial musical theatre. Not that being relative new kids on the block has cowed them in any way. Tara Louis Wilkinson's take on writer Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken's 1982 campy pastiche inspired by Roger Corman's 1960 B-movie is very much alive and kicking in its approach. Set in a Skid Row flower shop that's wilting badly, nerdy botanist Seymour stumbles upon a strange plant that brings dramatic fresh life to the neighbourhood. As the new money moves in accompanied by a media frenzy, Seymour's new status also improves his chances with shy shop girl Audrey, who he names the plant after. Audrey's dentist boyfriend Orin, meanwhile, as played by former X-Factor winner Rhydian, i

It seems fitting that Citizens Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill is talking about the Gorbals-based theatre's 2017 spring season while his production of The Rivals is still running. While Hill may have carved a reputation for programming more serious works since he took over the reins of the Citz, Sheridan's eighteenth century comedy, which plays until this weekend, shows off Hill's lighter side. As does too his forthcoming take on Stuart Paterson's version of Hansel and Gretel, which is this year's Christmas show at the Citz. Coming at the end of a season in which the company's revival of Trainspotting has captured the imagination of audiences across Glasgow on a huge scale, there is clearly fun to be had at all levels. As the Herald exclusively reveals the announcement of three shows and a mini festival that complete the Citizens Theatre's Spring 2017 season, tickets for which go on sale today, the theatre's more playful side can already be seen

Leonard Cohen was a joy. It's suddenly okay to say that now that the Canadian poet, song-writer and increasingly deep-throated singer has died aged 82, just three weeks after what has turned out to be his final album, You Want it Darker , was released. It wasn't always the way. Received wisdom in my assorted teenage lairs was that Laughing Lenny, as I took to calling him in gentle mockery of his deadpan funereal delivery, was the ultimate miseryguts. Growing up in the late 1970s and early 80s, existential crises were being embraced – albeit at a wilfully alienated distance – by assorted post-punk nihilists. Despair, depression and disorder were what seemed to make them tick in the urban wastelands we so self-consciously scowled our way around. Leonard Cohen, however, was as bleak as it gets. Or so we were told. Cohen was one of those names to drop. Jim Morrison, Lou Reed, Arthur Lee, Scott Walker and John Cale were others. These were names picked up from music paper eulog

There was a time in the pre internet 1990s when some of Edinburgh city centre's darker Old Town thoroughfares were emblazoned with hastily-pasted posters heralding some of the capital's lesser sung future attractions. Around the Cowgate, one could occasionally spot samizdat crosses spray-painted onto walls in a way that suggested some kind of un-named insurgency was afoot even as it seemed to indicate an impending emergency. This graffiti tag was also part of a subliminal insurrection that announced The Male Nurse were in the area. A couple of decades on, a similarly styled blue cross on a white background now forms the Keith Farquhar-designed cover of this long overdue vinyl only compilation of one of pop's most wayward missing links. The Male Nurse evolved from a band called Lucid, which featured vocalist Keith Farquhar, guitarists Alan Crichton and Andrew Hobson plus Craig Gibson, Spencer Smith and Martin Wilson, who had been at Leith Academy with Farquhar. Having play

Gina Birch can barely contain herself. “We had the most amazing gig,” enthuses the bass player with the Raincoats, the band she co-founded almost forty years ago with guitarist and co-vocalist Ana da Silver. “What a night! It was fantastic! I'm still flying high.” Birch is talking about the show the Raincoats did the night before at Islington Town Hall as part of the fortieth anniversary celebrations of Rough Trade, the record shop and label that became the social hub of London's post-hippy, post-punk underground in the mid-1970s. Back then, the Raincoats were part of the first wave of artists to release their records on Rough Trade in a way that would come to define a state of independence in the UK music scene. On a label diverse enough to include releases by Belfast agit-punks Stiff Little Fingers, Sheffield electronicists Cabaret Voltaire and reggae legend Augustus Pablo, the Raincoats stood out alongside Swiss band Kleenex and the saxophone-led skronk of Essenti

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Four stars The clue in this latest adventure by the Blood of the Young company is very much in the title. Inspired by a similar wheeze initiated by the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith while its building was being renovated, director Paul Brotherston and a football team size cast of eleven are this week inviting audiences to take a chance on their production of an un-named play, without any expectations of what might await them. This makes the reviewer's job a tricky one, as normal circumstances dictate that some basic elucidation regarding plot is usually forthcoming. As with Agatha Christie's long-running yarn, The Mousetrap, however, giving the game away in such a cavalier fashion here would be quite wrong. To be clear, no spoiler alerts are necessary. All that can be said of the experience is that it is a cheekily irreverent eighty-minute version of a classic play that is performed in the Tron's Victorian Bar. At various points it features a

It has been the best of times recently for Mike Poulton, whose stage adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel, A Tale of Two Cities, opens in Edinburgh tonight as part of the current tour of a production originally seen in 2014 at the Royal and Derngate Theatre, Northampton. Directed by current Royal and Derngate boss James Dacre, Poulton's adaptation of Dickens' French Revolution set saga announced Dacre's tenure with an epic flourish honed over two decades of working on classic texts by the likes of Chekhov and Schiller, and which have been seen in productions by the Royal Shakespeare Company and on Broadway. While more recently Poulton has adapted Hilary Mantel's novels, Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies for the RSC as well as a version of the York Mysteries, Dickens' tale of life during wartime is clearly a labour of love. “I'd always wanted to do A Tale of Two Cities,” he says. “It was a favourite novel, and Dickens being a man of the theatre, you ca