Coffee-Table Notes

The weather can turn in a minute on Mull. This is something Sandy Thomson is discovering as she rehearses Damned Rebel Bitches, her new play presented by her own North East of Scotland based Poorboy company in co- production with Mull Theatre, where it opens this weekend before embarking on a short tour of seven venues in Scotland. It seems appropriate, then, that meteorological extremes were one of the driving forces behind the play. The fact that Hurricane Sandy, the second costliest storm in American history that blew through Manhattan in 2012 shares a name with Thomson may be coincidental, but, like the elemental unrest that goes before her, Thomson is a force of nature. This was the case in Monstrous Bodies, Poorboy's most recent show, which melded the lives of a teenage Mary Shelley, who would go on to write Frankenstein, and a twenty-first century schoolgirl facing up to her own demons. This time out, Damned Rebel Bitches sees Thomson jump to the opposite end of the a

King's Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars When a lightbulb bursts during the opening massed rendition of Mack the Knife in this spirited production of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's 1928 anti capitalist musical, it follows a similar incident last weekend on the opening night of The Steamie. If this initially feels like lightning striking twice, Susan Worsfold's production for the Festival and King's Theatre initiated Attic Collective is far smarter than that. As it runs with what morphs into Poor Theatre to the max, emergency lights and hand-held spotlights are utilised for all to see. The latter is crucial in a show that leaves nothing hidden in its re-energising of Brecht's disruptive roots. On an otherwise bare stage, a band plays while members of the show's eighteen-strong ensemble pedal away at exercise bikes, presumably powering the show, but getting nowhere fast. While captions and slides are projected, dashing anti-establishment rake Macheath runs r

Last week, the man who in October 2016 closed down one of Scotland's most internationally renowned visual art institutions without notice or any apparent public consultation, claimed that initial reports that it was no longer going to have any artistic function had been a rumour. Simon Milne, Regius Keeper of the publicly owned Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh where Inverleith House gallery is situated, appeared to be attempting to rewrite history. Milne's contention that it was "never the case" that Inverleith House would cease to show art appears to contradict RBGE's own statement published last October which, while making clear that artistic activity would continue in the Garden itself, states: '... Inverleith House will no longer be dedicated to the display of contemporary art, and RBGE is looking at options for the alternative use of the building.' Since the closure, a public outcry provoked a 10,000-plus petition and an open letter from major artistic

The Playhouse, Edinburgh Four stars All the pink ladies, single or otherwise, are in the house for the touring revival of Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey's lovingly irreverent homage to the seemingly more innocent 1950s that went on to be the world's biggest musical and a smash movie too. With a fistful of hit songs and a pastel coloured cartoon style staging, David Gilmore's revisitation of his 1993 London production is a dazzling depiction of teenage dreams, where even the bad girls and boys are good. Despite this, it zones in on the heartbreak as much as the highs of the term time romance between tough guy Danny, nice girl Sandy and the gang. With The Wanted's Tom Parker donning Danny's leather jacket with a knowing swagger, Over the Rainbow winner Danielle Hope's Sandy isn't quite so sickly sweet as sometimes played, and ex East Ender Louisa Lytton's Rizzo is a beatnik in waiting. Set pieces are writ large, from the souped-up thrust of Greased

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars The sound and thunder of some very English and very heavy weather opens Chris Hannan's play, that puts real life disgraced Tory MP Enoch Powell at the heart of a debate about whether our differences can ever be reconciled. Powell, of course, was the bi-lingual, classics quoting scholar, whose so-called rivers of blood speech in 1968 was a dog-whistle to the sort of legitimised intolerance which has looked creepingly familiar of late. One of those who suffered is Rose, the woman of colour who grew up conscious of Powell's demonisation of her kind. As played by Amelia Donkor, Rose turns out to have a few prejudices of her own, even as she forms an unholy alliance with Sofia, the right wing academic she usurped. Moving between the late 1960s build-up to Powell's speech and 1992, Roxana Silbert's new staging of her 2016 Birmingham Rep production frames the action against Ti Green's tree-lined urban idyll and monumenta

Peter Hall – theatre, film and opera director Born November 22 1930; died September 11 2017 Without Peter Hall, who has died aged 86, the theatre world would be a very different place. Not only did Hall direct the first English language production of Samuel Beckett's era defining play, Waiting For Godot, when he was only twenty-four. Before he was thirty he had founded the Royal Shakespeare Company, and would go on to take over from Laurence Olivier at the helm of the National Theatre, overseeing the company's turbulent move to purpose built premises on London's South Bank. For the next half century Hall moved from precocious young mover and shaker to elder statesman, be it at Glyndebourne, where he oversaw numerous world class productions, or latterly with his own Peter Hall Company. He returned to the National for the last time in 2011 to celebrate his 80 th birthday with a production of Twelfth Night. His daughter Rebecca played Viola. Bearded, leather jacketed

Holger Czukay – bass player, electronicist, composer Born March 24 1938: died September 5 2017 Holger Czukay, who has been found dead in his apartment aged 79, was much more than a bass player. Whilst with Can, the post hippy purveyors of a form of cosmic free-form rock he co-founded in 1968, the former student of radical composer Karlheinz Stockhausen helped define the band's propulsive and hypnotic rhythmic power alongside drummer Jaki Leibezeit. It was Czukay's work in the studio as editor and engineer, however, that helped shape and focus the band's surprisingly funky sound. His pioneering experiments with sampling, electronics and what came to be known as world music revealed a playful nature that coursed through both his solo and collaborative work. Czukay was born in what was then the Free City of Danzig, the Baltic port which later became part of Poland as Gdansk. Forced to flee with his parents as the Russians advanced, Czukay recalled arriving in Berli