Coffee-Table Notes

Tron Theatre, Glasgow  Five stars Franz Kafka’s story about a young man called Gregor Samsa, who wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a giant insect, could have been tailor-made for Vanishing Point. Under the guidance of director Matthew Lenton, the company’s penchant for dark visual poetry is at a premium in this new theatricalisation of Kafka’s tale. Lenton and his team have turned Gregor’s existential drudgery into an exquisitely realised portrait of what happens when you push someone into a corner enough to dehumanise them from a system they can no longer bear. While it stays true to Kafka’s original, it’s the fear and loathing of those around Gregor that counts. As scripted by Lenton with the cast, the play has Gregor a slave to the gig economy, whose self-isolation in his bedroom sees him change overnight. This is no sulky teen painting their walls black, but a cry from the dark that no-one around him understands. As his life goes into lockdown, Gr

Perth Theatre Four stars Don’t be fooled by the Palm Court style pre-show music for Lu Kemp’s pared-down production of Oscar Wilde’s cut-glass classic. The sounds get a whole lot livelier by the end. As indeed do the goings on between Grant O’Rourke and Daniel Cahill’s confirmed bachelors Algernon and Jack - or is it? - and the objects of their affection, Gwendolen and Cecily, brought to posh-frocked life by Caroline Deyga and Amy Kennedy. A whole lot of town and country planning goes into the dynamic duo’s respective attempts at wooing, as they attempt to lead double lives in order to get their way without being found out. Cecily and Gwendolen, meanwhile, bat out their two-faced politesse through gritted teeth over afternoon tea. They’re not a patch, however, on Lady Bracknell, magnificently embodied here by Karen Dunbar as a fur coat and nae knickers upwardly mobile WAG, whose Kelvinside accent only slips enough to reveal her roots on her revelatory handbag line. Artif

Ray Harryhausen’s adventures in stop motion animation left generations of film-goers wide-eyed at the feats of artistry he brought to the big screen. More than half a century’s work is brought together in Ray Harryhausen: Titan of Cinema, a suitably epic blockbuster exhibition that brings together the biggest collection of the mythological master’s work to date. Presented in conjunction with the Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation, this major summer commemorates what would have been Harryhausen’s 100 th  birthday.   From the sword-fighting skeletons of the Sinbad films and Jason and the Argonauts to the dinosaurs of One Million Years B.C., Harryhausen’s painstakingly realised creations forged from his ‘Dynamation’ technique had a profound influence on film directors including Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Tim Burton. Nick Park and Peter Lord, who created Wallace and Gromit for Aardman Animation, have also praised Harryhausen’s onscreen alchemy, which itself was influenced by s

When Tim Astley’s grand-father gave him a cassette of a 1960s radio comedy series called Round The Horne, it set in motion a life-long love affair with the show that has resulted in a hugely successful live staging that arrives in Edinburgh next week. Using original scripts by Barry Took and Marty Feldman, Astley’s production for his Apollo Theatre Company recreates the original live radio format to revisit an iconic programme that helped set a template for sketch comedy that continues today. “I was twelve when I was given the cassette of Round The Horne,’ says Astley. “My grand-father said he thought it might be something I’d quite like, and it opened me up to this whole new world which has stayed with me since then. Of course, at that age, I certainly didn’t understand all the jokes. It was only much later I realised how clever they are in terms of what they got away with.” Running for four series’ between 1965 and 1968, Round The Horne’s ensemble cast was led by Kenneth Hor