Coffee-Table Notes

Julie Taymor wasn’t the obvious choice to put Disney’s The Lion King on stage. It’s not that the maverick American theatre maker was a purveyor of small-cast studio-bound off-Broadway experiments who might be out of her depth with something so epic. She was used to creating big shows utilising a multitude of global theatre styles and techniques. If anything, Taymor’s pedigree in directing productions of Shakespeare and classic operas that incorporated masks and puppetry were maybe considered a little bit too out there to take on a high-profile commercial venture based on the success of the Oscar-winning 1994 animated film of the same name. Audiences might be more familiar with the show’s score, composed by Elton John with lyrics by Tim Rice to accompany Roger Allers and Irene Mecchi’s book, with an underscore by Hans Zimmer. The show’s story of Simba the lion and his exile from his pride following the murder of his father drew inspiration from Hamlet and Greek tragedy. In this res

The monster in the room is no match for Pauline Lockhart. Don’t be fooled by appearances as Lockhart squares up to giant puppets in Strange Tales, a new compendium of Chinese ghost stories brought to life for the festive season by site-specific auteurs Grid iron in co-production with the Traverse Theatre. The Glasgow-born actor may be small in stature, but as co-writer and co-director of the show, she takes no prisoners. As a fourth degree martial arts black belt, neither is Lockhart someone you’d mess with at any level. It was Lockhart’s experience with martial arts that first made her look at the work of Qing dynasty writer Pu Songling contained in his collection of almost 500 pieces of work, translated as Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. While nominally ghost stories, their fantastical content took them beyond western notions of the genre in a way that also gave them dramatic thrust. “They’re not like ghost stories we’re used to,” says Lockhart of Pu’s 400-year-old yar

Michael J. Pollard – Actor Born May 30, 1939; died November 20, 2019 Michael J. Pollard, who has died aged 80, was an actor whose cherubic looks gave him a puckish air that added edge to his many outsider roles. This was defined in Bonnie and Clyde, director Arthur Penn’s iconic 1967 vehicle for Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, which saw Pollard nominated for an Oscar for his breakout role as dim-witted gas-station attendant, C.W. Moss. In the film that helped kick-start the American new wave in style, Pollard’s depiction of Moss gave him the air of someone slightly stoned, but with more rebellious manic tendencies that filtered through after he fell in with a bad crowd. It was a character trait that fed into later parts, including Robert Redford’s sidekick in Sidney J. Furie’s 1970 biker buddy movie, Little Fauss and Big Halsy. It was there too in the title role of Dirty Little Billy, director Stan Dragoti’s gritty reworking of the story of wild west outlaw Billy the Kid’s