Coffee-Table Notes

When Anders Lustgarten wrote the first draft of his play, Lampedusa, in late 2014, it seemed no-one was really talking about what was a then largely un-noticed international migrant crisis. The week before the play opened in London a few months later, Lustgarten notes, over 400 migrants were killed when a boat capsized off the coast of Libya. A few days later, over 700 people were drowned trying to reach the Italian island of Lampedusa, which the play is named after, and which has become a primary European entry point for mainly African migrants. “The journey of the play is an interesting one,” says Lustgarten, as a new production of Lampedusa prepares to open in the intimate confines of the Citizens Theatre's Circle Studio in association with the young Wonder Fools company, overseen by director Jack Nurse. “I'd been doing a lot of work on development banks, and one of the things they do is displace people, and through organisations like the IMF (International Monetary Fund)

To whom it may concern I was surprised to read in The Art Newspaper how internationally renowned Edinburgh artspace Inverleith House had apparently been 'saved' from closure. Simon Milne, the publicly accountable Regius Keeper of Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, where Inverleith House is situated, claimed that “There was a rumour that we are not going to do art anymore...that was never the case.” Milne repeated his claims in the Herald newspaper on September 15 th 2017. Milne's claims directly contradict the statement RBGE were forced to make in October 2016 when details of the closure were leaked to the press. The statement said that “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.” In an interview in the Herald on October 19 th 2016, Milne was quoted as saying that Inverleith House was unable to “wash its face” financially. Milne also said that “These are

In a dimly lit rehearsal room, a troupe of performers are slow-walking their way into the performance area as mournful music plays. Led by actresses Pauline Goldsmith and Cath Whitefield, the other twelve people seem to be clawing their way onstage,cutting loose as they go in some undefined quasi religious ritual. At moments the choreographed stage shapes they throw look somewhere between the video for Michael Jackson's song, Thriller, and a line dance. While some of it can't help but look silly, it is the sight of a company cutting loose in order to explore what their performance, in its early stages and still largely formless, is about. This may be standard for a theatre company such as Vanishing Point, whose artistic director and creative visionary Matthew Lenton is sitting in the dark, shouting words from a text at the performers as they go. With the musical accompaniment, it's a hypnotic and oddly moving spectacle. The best thing of all about is when you remember t

Pitlochry Festival Theatre Four stars Enough tartan tat to line Pitlochry high street carpets the stage like a badly furnished highland hotel at the opening of Peter Arnott's swish new stage adaptation of Compton Mackenzie's 1941 comic novel. A pantomime style stag looms on the horizon before a troupe of socialist hikers march onto land marked by 'No Trespassing' signs later used for firewood. Welcome to Glenbogle, the crumbling pile overseen by Donald MacDonald of MacDonald, aka Ben Nevis, whose territorial claims on the land don't seem to apply when he and his partner in crime Kilwhillie are flogging it off to big-talking American developer, Chester Royde. Chester's trophy bride Carrie has her own vested interest, while her sister-in-law Myrtle is more inclined to colonise hunky nationalist poet, Alan, than nice-but-dim Hector. Tellingly, Alan sides with the tartan Tories to repel English boarders. The symbolism is laid on with a Saltire-patterned

In 1967, the world was being turned upside down. With the counter culture in full psychedelic swing, the so-called Summer of Love was about to break, even as protests against the Vietnam War were building to a peak while race riots flared up across America. In the UK, homosexuality was decriminalised, while abortion was legalised. Closer to home, Celtic won the European Cup and championship, the first Northern European club to do so. Meanwhile, the global village Marshall McLuhan had predicted was brought into our living rooms when the first ever live international satellite broadcast saw 400 million viewers watch the Beatles fanfare in All You Need is Love. It may have been the Fab Four's kaleidoscopic masterpiece, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and later their Magical Mystery Tour record and film that sound-tracked the year, but things were happening underground as well. Beyond the tripped-out whimsy of Pink Floyd's debut record, the Doors, Love's F

When Mercury Music Prize winning band Young Fathers were commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery to make a short film, the Edinburgh based trio of Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and Graham 'G' Hastings relished the proposition. The context was a UK tour of Van Dyck's seventeenth century painting, Self-portrait. Having been purchased by the NPG in 2014, Van Dyck's work formed a key part of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery's Summer 2017 exhibition, Looking Good: The Male Gaze from Van Dyck to Lucien Freud, which explored male image, identity and appearance. Young Fathers' film was one of six commissions. Other artists who made films were Marcus Coates, John Stezaker, Mark Wallinger, Karrie Fransman and Jason Turner. It was Young Fathers' film, however, that garnered much of the attention. Over a low electronic hum, the film, shot in SNPG, features a text co-written by Bankole with Young Fathers former manager Tim Brinkhurst. The words ar

Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow until January 21 st 2018 2017 has been a busy year for Stephen Sutcliffe, the Glasgow-based pop cultural obsessive who re-imagines a pick-and-mix of late twentieth century iconography culled from his personal archive in his own fractured image. GOMA's showing of three video collages, photographs and wall drawings follows the Anthony Burgess inspired No End to Enderby in Manchester and the Lindsay Anderson based Sex Symbols in Sandwich Signs in Edinburgh. It marks the first public showing of five of the works together since being bought by Glasgow Museums in 2013. Two others loaned by Sutcliffe complete the show. The walls may be painted bright yellow, but the crossed-out cartoon clouds are anything but bright in Untitled Wall Drawing (Selected Errors) (2011), which, inspired by New Yorker cartoonist Saul Steinberg, sets out its store as a monument to failure. Such expressions of self-doubt and ennui were part and parcel for serious young men of