Coffee-Table Notes

Rob Drummond was at home in England when he looked at the news feed on his phone, and saw a post about the fire at Glasgow School of Art. It was June 2018, and the writer and performer behind such hits as Grain in the Blood, Bullet Catch and Our Fathers initially presumed the post was to mark the fourth anniversary of the 2014 blaze in GSA’s Mackintosh Building, which was undergoing a major restoration after much of it was destroyed. As it turned out, the news was far worse, as reports of a second fire were beamed across the world. As someone who had taken Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s iconic construction for granted while living in Glasgow, Drummond was as stunned as anyone else with even a passing relationship with the Mack. While emotions continue to run high in response to the disaster, Drummond channelled his thoughts on all this into what he does best. The result is The Mack, a new play that forms part of Oran Mor’s A Play, A Pie and a Pint lunchtime theatre season in Glas

Tramway, Glasgow Five stars When Cora Bissett’s autobiographical gig theatre epic first appeared at the Traverse Theatre last year as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, it pretty much stole the heart of everyone who saw it. Bissett’s Herald Angel winning tale of how she went from being a geeky Fife teenager to being signed to a major record label with the band she was suddenly the face of was more than a mere nostalgia trip to more innocent if more excessive times. For all her true life adventures of touring with Radiohead and Blur before everything crashed and burned, it tapped into something more personal, more profound and more moving. Eight months or so since its debut, and like any indie band paying its dues, this revival of Bissett’s show has moved up a gear into a bigger venue before preparing to take the world by storm. For a show which has already made the big time without selling out its rock and roll soul, this isn’t a problem. It starts quietly, with Biss

When Cora Bissett’s piece of autobiographical gig theatre, What Girls Are Made Of, opens its international tour at Tramway in Glasgow tonight, it follows a Herald Angel winning smash hit success as part of the Traverse Theatre’s 2018 Edinburgh Festival Fringe programme. Bissett’s inspirational tale of how she went from being a small town girl from Fife to signing to a major record label with her band, Darlingheart, is a joyous rites of passage that travels across Scotland before visiting Northern Ireland, Brazil and the USA. Co-produced by the Traverse and directed by the new writing theatre’s then artistic director Orla O’Loughlin, What Girls Are Made Of is somewhat fittingly presented in association with Scotland’s premiere gig promoters, Regular Music. Once Bissett had the initial idea for the show, however, she turned to Gillian Garrity and Margaret-Anne O’Donnell, who she had worked with on her production of Glasgow Girls, and who had now formalised their working relationship