Coffee-Table Notes

Robert Alan Evans didn’t know what sort of audiences to expect to come and see Kes, his two-actor adaptation of Barry Hines’ novel, A Kestrel for A Knave, at Leeds Playhouse. Originally commissioned by Catherine Wheels Theatre Company and now receiving a studio-based production at Perth Theatre to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Ken Loach’s seminal film version of the Yorkshire-set book, Evans was effectively bringing Hines’ story home. For some, the tale of a seemingly dead-end fifteen-year-old boy and the kestrel he trains was too much. “There were loads of men who came, who were all between about fifty and sixty years old,” says Evans, “and they were a bit noisy, and some of them were probably a bit drunk, but they came along and just cried. I think, for a lot of these guys of a certain age, Kes is a really important book, and an important story that speaks to them. Seeing those men in the audience, you realise they were going back over their own memories, and that st

It was watching Elvis Presley’s ’68 Comeback Special on TV that first caused Claire Cunningham to fall in love with the king of rock and roll. The internationally renowned choreographer was a teenager, and was struck by the reinvigorated rawness of a talent that had been effectively neutered over the previous few years by appearing in a succession of schmaltz-laden big-screen rom-coms. Music had moved on in Elvis’ absence, but now he was back with a more mature attitude which nevertheless retained both the untamed talent and the voice that had made him an international superstar. “He made everything look effortless,” says Cunningham, who brings her new show, Thank You Very Much, to Glasgow next week. “His voice seemed to me to have this extraordinary range, especially on his early 50’s songs. It was initially as a singer I fell in love with Elvis, but there was the interpretation of the songs and the performing of them as well. I became really fascinated with people who are extrao

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars Men-only clubs can cover a multitude of sins. By setting his play in an international network of African-run barbershops, however, Inua Ellams taps into a world that is both intimate and social enough to foster a set of exchanges that may begin with the international language of football, but broadens out to question exactly what it means to be a man of colour in a white world. Bijan Sheibani’s production makes a joyful song and dance of all this in a busy, bright and brash production that moves between six shops, one in London and five in different African countries. It’s April 2012, and Chelsea are about to hammer Barcelona in the Champions League semi-final. This event ramps up an already highly charged network of men and boys in need of a pre-match trim and all the cross-generational cut and thrust that goes with it. These include the sort of conversations that go beyond matters of life and death in the game itself. In Niger