Coffee-Table Notes

Derek Watson – musician, author, actor, lecturer, book shop proprietor Born November 6 1948; died September 17, 2018 Derek Watson, who has died aged 69 following a short illness, was a man of many parts and arts. Those who knew the Edinburgh-born renaissance man as an actor performing under the name Derwent Watson at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow may not have been aware that Watson began his relationship with the Citz as a musical director on Christmas shows, becoming forever known thereafter as Uncle Derek. Similarly, the youngsters watching Uncle Derek won’t have known of Watson’s passion for Wagner and other composers he was an authority on, penning several biographies on them, and slipping little classical passages into his compositions for the Citz’s festive fare un-noticed. Nor might those who heard Watson give lectures on Wagner and others be aware of his long-standing role as proprietor of a bookshop in West Linton where he lived for more than twenty years, with

King’s Theatre, Edinburgh Three stars All walls, if not cats, are grey throughout Rona Munro’s adaptation of a brand new Inspector Rebus yarn by Ian Rankin, putting flesh and blood on the misanthropic ex-detective’s travails through Edinburgh’s underbelly. An unplanned turn of events shortly into the second act sees Charles Lawson, playing Rebus with suitably crumpled swagger, taken ill. With the show halted, Neil McKinven, cast as assorted Edinburgh low-lifes, heroically steps up with script in hand to complete the show. Up until that point, the plot twists of Munro and Rankin’s yarn saw Rebus haunted by the ghosts of unsolved murders past. These are embodied by Dani Heron and Eleanor House’s mini chorus of murdered young women who fell prey to the sort of men with enough power to bury them seemingly without trace. With Rebus’ former partner Siobhan Clarke now in charge, all roads lead to ‘Big Ger’ Cafferty, played with a touch of Charlie Endell Esquire menace by John Stahl

Cathy Tyson wasn’t overly familiar with Ian Rankin’s Rebus novels when she was cast as DI Siobhan Clarke in Rona Munro’s new stage play penned in association with Rankin. Rebus: Long Shadows, which arrived in Edinburgh this week as part of a UK tour, makes up the latest episode of the now retired Edinburgh detective’s dissection of the city’s underbelly. Coming to a fictional icon who has already been immortalised on TV and radio cold had its advantages for Tyson. “At the beginning of rehearsal I’d only read the one book,” she says shortly after Long Shadows opened at Birmingham Rep, one of the show’s co-producers. “John Stahl who’s in the show had read all twenty-one.” This didn’t stop Tyson getting stuck in to a relationship between the characters that’s likely to be scrutinised closely by diehard fans in a way that those in other plays might not. “I knew there was a relationship there between Rebus and Siobhan, where he was the maverick and she did things by the book, s