Coffee-Table Notes

The Playhouse, Edinburgh Three stars When writer Bruce Joel Rubin and director Jerry Zucker's celestial romance first appeared on the big screen in 1990, it wasn't that far removed from 1960s cult TV show Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), only with extra added schmaltz. Two decades later, Rubin's musical stage play featuring songs by former Eurythmic Dave Stewart and songwriter Glen Ballard invested a further layer of gooeyness on a story which had already given Unchained Melody by the Righteous Brothers renewed anthemic status As financier Sam and potter Molly's domestic bliss in their Brooklyn loft is cruelly cut short, none of this is a bad thing in Bob Tomson's touring production of Rubin and co's recently revamped version. Things may be a tad one-dimensional at times, but the balance between poignancy and slapstick works well, with much of the latter provided by Jacqui Dubois' gospel-singing medium, Oda Mae. The second act bank scene between Oda

At first glance, Anthony Neilson might not be the most obvious choice to write a new stage version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as this year's Christmas show at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh. Neilson's early works, after all, were lumped in with the 1990s wave of so-called in-yer-face writers. As a theatre-maker who creates his work in the rehearsal room rather than at his desk, Neilson's way of working remains outwith the norm in text-based British theatre, particularly where it might be applied to a seasonal play for children. Look again, however, and there is a magical quality that pulses much of Neilson's work, that seems to have leapt onto the stage straight from his head without any intellectual filter to restrain it. Neilson's most celebrated show to be seen in Scotland to date, The Wonderful World of Dissocia, originally produced by the Tron Theatre at the 2004 Edinburgh International Festival, in part created a Wonderland style fantasia

Anyone who ever chanced upon Moon Hop , the occasional club co-run by members of Edinburgh-sired band FOUND, and which ran at Henry's Cellar Bar in Edinburgh throughout 2014 and 2015 will have stumbled into a late-night multi-cultural wonderland of musical riches. With the evening introduced by low-key live shows from the likes of The Sexual Objects, Withered Hand and ex Arab Strappers Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton playing separately, FOUND themselves could be seen in various solo guises and together . As wonderful as such uniquely styled outings were, Moon Hop 's heart was pulsed by the records spun before, inbetween and after the live shows. This came in the form of some of the wildest array of records you'd never heard, a euphoric melting pot of retro-futuristic psych soul funk disco eclectica spread out across the decades and culled from all four corners of the world. Here was a compilation album in waiting, something that could exist on a par with other crate-d

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