Coffee-Table Notes

King’s Theatre, Edinburgh Three stars The knives are out from the start in this new tour of David Edgar’s wordy reimagining of Robert Louis Stevenson’s gothic split personality yarn. That’s the sound of them being sharpened at the start of Kate Saxon’s production, beneath a low rumble on a bleak looking stage dominated by a bridge that presumably moves between two worlds. Into this steps Phil Daniels’ Jekyll, an emotionally bunged-up sophisticate with a cut-glass Morningside twang and a repressed desire to cut loose. Liberation comes indirectly care of his free-thinking sister Katherine, who gives her already slightly creepy brother freedom of their dead father’s library, where all manner of mind-expanding formulae is presumably archived. Cue the unleashing of the amoral Mr Hyde, who brutalises his way through London before OD’ing on his own excesses. Edgar’s 1991 play’s liberal reinterpretation adds a female presence to the story that goes beyond victimhood. Saxon runs with

Theatre Royal, Glasgow Four stars Nothing is remotely black and white in the latest touring revival of Yasmina Reza’s 1996 meditation on friendship of a competitively male kind. Over the last two decades, the play has enabled numerous trios of TV-friendly faces to riff on the ever-changing nature of boys at play.   On the surface, Reza has written a chic sit-com of ever decreasing circles, a blank canvas of middle-aged spread that dissects and – yes – deconstructs a three-way split of a lifetime of shared experience. In truth, she has created something timeless, but which ebbs and flows in value at every showing. Its starting point, the purchase of a Robert Rymanesque white on white painting by Nigel Havers’ debonair and ever-aspirant Serge, and the explosive rift it causes with his cynical friend Marc, played by Denis Lawson, is actually something of a red herring. This becomes clear when their other friend Yvan appears. With more down to earth problems of his own to conte

People can get the wrong idea about Phil Daniels. This probably makes the actor still best known for playing totally wired self-destructive uber-mod Jimmy in Quadrophenia, Franc Roddam’s big-screen adaptation of The Who’s bombastic 1970s rock opera, the ideal candidate to take on the twin title roles of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Audiences will get their own chance to see how things balance out this week, when Daniels appears in Edinburgh in a touring revival of David Edgar’s take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s gothic split personality yarn. Kate Saxon’s Touring Theatre Consortium production sees the story effectively make a prodigal’s return to its spiritual home. Daniels even gives Dr Jekyll a refined Edinburgh accent, while Mr Hyde speaks in a coarser form of Scots. “It’s still set in Victorian London,” says Daniels, “but doing it in Edinburgh, with all those streets, you can see where Stevenson got it all from. Dr Jekyll’s a bit lost, and isn’t doing much with his life, and I think w

There’s a little ritual that Denis Lawson has initiated alongside his fellow cast members of the current tour of Yasmina Reza’s play, Art, which arrives in Glasgow next week. “Within three minutes of the curtain coming down I’ve made three vodka martinis,” says a jaunty-sounding Lawson. “Then we sit down and have a little chat.” The image of Lawson, Nigel Havers and Stephen Tompkinson – all gentleman thespians of a certain vintage - gathering together for post-show libations in such a civilised fashion says much about the calibre of Reza’s play, as well as the trickle-down sense of bonhomie it has inspired among its cast. “We do get on extraordinary well,” purrs the now 70-year-old Lawson in a still discernible Perthshire burr. “Which is lucky. We’ve all known each other a little bit from working together over the years, but as soon as we got into the rehearsal room, we all just clicked straight away.” Given that Art is all about the strains and pains of friendship, th