Coffee-Table Notes

A roar of flamenco ended the final week of this year’s Herald Angel Awards, as guitarist Daniel Martinez and his company brought an Andalusian flavour to Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre on Sunday morning. Martinez was awarded an Angel for his show, Art of Believing, seen at the Space Triplex venue on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and described in these pages by Rob Adams as ‘undiluted Andalusia.’ It was a suitably international finale to this year’s awards, now enabled by the Festival Theatre’s umbrella body, Capital Theatres. Over its quarter century existence, the Herald arts team has always prided itself on its expansive reach across the family of awards created with meticulous artistry by Oli Conway. The grandest of the Angel family, the Herald Archangel, was given to Ridiculusmus, the unique theatrical duo of Jon Haynes and David Woods, whose run of Die! Die! Old People Die! marked the pair’s longstanding relationship with Edinburgh, which includes a Herald Angel in 1999 fo

When Andrew Panton open’s Dundee Rep’s autumn season next week with his production of Tay Bridge, Peter Arnott’s new play about the disaster in 1879 that saw the then longest rail bridge of its kind in the world collapse, it will mark a lot more than the start of his third season as artistic director. By happy coincidence, the new programme coincides with the eightieth anniversary of Dundee Rep itself after it was founded by touring theatre manager Robert Thornely, who forged an alliance between his professional company and the amateur Dundee Dramatic Society. The latter had purchased a disused jute mill which was used as its premises, with the new Dundee Rep company moving to Foresters’ Hall before the building burnt down in 1963. After a brief nomadic existence, the Rep eventually re-opened in the former Dudhope Church. The purpose-built theatre the Rep now occupies first opened its doors in 1982, with Robert Robertson as artistic director. If the Rep’s eightieth birthday wa

Leith Theatre Neil Cooper Five Stars The Jarvis Cocker approved Extinction Rebellion stall outside Leith Theatre is doing great business before the man himself comes wiggling through the red mist, throwing shapes on a centre-stage platform like a living statue. With his backside stuck out, Cocker gazes into a mirror for the opening Pharaoh, his string-bean frame and 1970s perma-brown threads cast in a heroic hue. “Have you taken Leith of your senses?” Cocker asks wryly once he’s done by way of introduction to his latest concept. He quotes from Claude Debussy, born on the same date as the gig in 1862, and peppers his between-song banter with further bon mots from fellow celebrants, including Dorothy Parker, John Lee Hooker, Carson McCullers and Ray Bradbury. The glam racket of Further Complications gives way to the Can-like groove of Children of the Echo, the song’s mythological intent aided by the celestial backing vocals of harpist Serafina Steer and violinist Emma Sm