Coffee-Table Notes

When Luke Sutherland formed Rev Magnetic to release his first self-generated music for more than a decade, the former driving force behind Long Fin Killie and Bows as well as sometime collaborator with Mogwai had a story to tell. Given that the Scots-African composer and singer has also penned three novels, the most recent of which, Venus as a Boy, was turned into a stage play for the National Theatre of Scotland in which Sutherland appeared alongside actor Tam Dean Burn, this should come as no surprise. As audiences for Rev Magnetic’s two shows in Edinburgh tonight and Glasgow next week should recognise, the band’s resultant Versus Universe album and new single, Schoenberg in America, tells a story that only Sutherland could conjure up. At the heart of Versus Universe’s narrative is a middle-aged woman whose astronaut parents disappeared in the early days of a space programme launched in the late 1970s by a West German company in what was then Zaire (now the Democratic Republic o

Andy Robin – Wrestler B orn August 31, 1935; died December 4, 2019 Andy Robin, who has died aged 84, may have been best known for Hercules, the wrestling bear who he and his former show-jumping champion wife Maggie effectively adopted as a member of the family. Robin was nevertheless a powerful and popular wrestler in his own right, whose trademark power lock became a winning move to be feared. Entering the ring to the sound of Scotland the Brave, sometimes wielding a full size tractor tyre while sporting a kilt, Robin became a local hero, whose pre-Hercules success chimed with the grappling game’s boom years. He made frequent TV appearances on World of Sport’s Saturday afternoon broadcasts that attracted millions of viewers. Things changed, however, ehen Robin bought Hercules for £50 from the Highland Wildlife Park in Kingussie when the bear was nine months old. Robin had hit upon the idea after wrestling another bear, Terrible Ted, while appearing at Maple Leaf Gardens i

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow Four stars Beware, old-school European passport holders attempting to travel to mythical Shakespearian versions of neighbouring countries in the near future. As John McGeachie’s Syracusian abroad Egeon discovers from the start when he goes in search of his two lost boys in director Andy McGregor’s wildly irreverent take on one of the bard’s earliest rom-coms, little Ephesus is a local town for local people. In a show performed with unabashed glee by second-year BA Acting students, this doesn’t stop Speir Sadivo’s piano playing Duke vamping like a maestro before granting him a twenty-four hour pass to see who or what he can dig up. Egeon’s two little boys, meanwhile, both called Antipholus, and each with servants named Dromio in tow, are clearly peas from the same pod.   As depicted by James Ripple and Adam Butler as the Antipholuses and Mabel Thomas and Yolanda Mitchell as the Dromios, their identikit hipster looks causes all manner o