Coffee-Table Notes

If commuters at Aberdeen International Airport boarding a flight to the Shetland Islands find themselves sitting next to a woman wearing a fat suit at some point this weekend, they shouldn’t be alarmed. The curiously-clad passenger is likely to be writer, director and performer Daisy Campbell, and the oddness of her appearance will be a suitably off-kilter means of getting her props aboard a hand-luggage only flight. This is in order to be able to do the last ever performance of her play, Pigspurt’s Daughter, at Lerwick Town Hall on Monday night after touring it intermittently over the last year following a run at Hampstead Theatre. Pigspurt’s Daughter is an all-consuming homage to Campbell’s father, Ken Campbell, the madcap genius and alternative conscience of British theatre, who died suddenly ten years ago. Monday would have been his 77 th birthday. Such coincidences have featured in Campbell’s life ever since she grew up surrounded by the creative chaos of her father’s work.

Take three women writers, commission them to write brand new plays and reimaginings of classic works with strong female leads. Add visiting companies attempting something similar and a programme of outreach work that looks at some of the issues all this raises, knit it together as the Citizens Theatre’s 2019 season, and announce the details exclusively in today’s Herald. This is exactly what Citz artistic director Dominic Hill has done in a programme that puts women’s voices at the theatre’s centre. This is the case from Stef Smith’s time-hopping take on Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Zinnie Harris’ new version of John Webster’s Jacobean revenge tragedy, The Duchess of Malfi, to Frances Poet’s play, Fibres, which looks at the lingering effects of asbestos poisoning in the workplace.  There is also a speedy touring revival of Cora Bissett’s Herald Angel winning autobiographical play, What Girls Are Made of, which stops off at Tramway, where the Citizens company is currently based whi

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Five stars There is an emotional ache at the heart of Ella Hickson’s reimagining of J.M. Barrie’s much-loved children’s story, brought to vivid life by director Eleanor Rhode on Max Johns’ expansive set that opens out from children’s bedroom to lost boys’ hideout and pirate’s lair. It’s an ache of wonder and loss that treads the shadow-line between the two in a world where growing up isn’t always easy. None of the play’s over-riding seriousness takes away from the transformative sense of joy that runs through a show that makes Isobel McArthur’s Wendy much more than Peter Pan’s sidekick once she and her brothers fly off to Never Land where she’s meant to play mum. As she learns from her sisters-in-arms Tink and Tiger Lily how to hang tough, Wendy also comes to terms with the death of her brother Tom, whose presence gives the show added depths. This is seen through the transformation of the family home as a house of laughter to one of pain. I