Coffee-Table Notes

Edinburgh Festival Fringe @  Newhailes House & Garden, Musselburgh Four stars If you go down to the woods over the next couple of weeks, weather permitting, the surprise in Grid Iron theatre company’s long awaited new outdoor show comes in just how well an open space can work for such expansive material. Much of this in Ben Harrison’s adaptation of Norwegian writer Erlend Loe’s 2004 novel as translated into English by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw is down to designer Becky Minto’s use of space. Working with lighting designer Elle Taylor, Minto’s transformation of a tree covered glade in a National Trust for Scotland run estate into a bijou hideaway for the play’s runaway hero provides a necessary sense of intimacy.   Doppler is a man who seemingly lives an ordinary urban existence with his high-flying wife and two children. Shortly after his father dies, he has an accident on his bike, and responds by moving out of the family home and living in a tent in the forest. In order to survive

Edinburgh International Festival 2021 @ Traverse Theatre Four stars Taking care is everything in Enda Walsh’s new play, which charts the emotional and psychological whirlwind of a young man under observation in an unnamed institution. The pyjamas the young man wears as he stumbles into a room still littered with the debris from some kind of party the night before is the giveaway in Walsh’s own production, which leads Edinburgh International Festival’s theatre programme in this tentative return to live performance.   The young man is called John Kane, and, as he tidies up the mess on Jamie Vartan’s set, it is as if he is attempting to restore order inside his own head. Disembodied voices ask after his well-being in a booth that resembles a confessional. Meanwhile, what appears to be a giant lobster and an old man turn out to be two women called Mary, a clown doctor double act with stars in their eyes. When they’re not hogging the spotlight themselves, they enable John to role-play his t

Dusty Hill – Bass player, singer, songwriter   Born May 19, 1949; died July 27/28, 2021      Dusty Hill, who has died aged 72, was the bass player and co vocalist with ZZ Top, the Texas sired trio whose combination of southern blues, bar-room boogie, bump-and-grind rhythms and libidinously inclined lyrics hit commercial pay dirt. There was humour too, reflected in the identical appearance of Hill and guitarist and lead vocalist Billy Gibbons. As they rocked out in co-ordinated fashion to the likes of Gimme All Your Lovin’, Sharp Dressed Man (1983), (1983), and Legs (1983), both wore shades, ten gallon hats and voluminous chest-length beards Hill and Gibbons called Texan goatees.    The dry humour was driven home even more by the fact that the only band member without extensive facial hair was called Frank Beard, who only sported a mere moustache. In videos for the songs that became MTV staples, Hill and Gibbons looked like runaway Amish homeboys who’d discovered how to have a good time

J ackie Mason – Comedian, actor Born June 9, 1928; died July 24, 2021     Jackie Mason, who has died aged 93, was an acerbic and forthright comedian, whose shtick of amused outrage maintained an unreconstructed attitude over a career that stretched over more than half a century. As a stand-up, his former calling as a rabbi held him in good stead, with his Jewishness a key part of his act. This was delivered in a thickset Yiddish-inflected Brooklynese that never left him. His one-man shows filled theatres, won Tony awards, and saw him nominated for an Olivier award. As a satirist he was compared to Mark Twain, and his contemporary Mel Brooks declared him one of the greatest comedians of all time.   In the 1960s, Mason was a major draw on the American TV circuit, before being kept off The Ed Sullivan Show for two years after being accused of giving the host the finger when Sullivan gave him a three-minute to start winding up his act. There was a conflict too with Frank Sinatra in the 198

Michael Horovitz – Poet, publisher, editor, promoter   Born April 4, 1935; died July 7, 2021       Michael Horovitz, who has died aged 86, was a poet who helped kick open the doors of perception for an artform hitherto presumed to be the preserve of dusty scholars penning slim volumes held in hallowed halls. While Horovitz published twelve volumes of his own work across five decades, beyond his own writing, he became a tireless evangelist for a very English counter culture. He spread the word initially through New Departures, the magazine he co-founded with Anna Lovell and David Sladen in 1959 as an audacious counterblast to received literary orthodoxies.   Early issues of New Departures published work by William Burroughs, Stevie Smith, Samuel Beckett and Allen Ginsberg, as well as poems and dialogues by future founder of 7:84 Theatre Company, John McGrath. As the magazine moved through the 1970s and into the 1980s, Horovitz introduced newer voices, including Kathy Acker, Joolz Denby,

Stuart Damon – Actor   Born February 5, 1937; died June 29, 2021      Stuart Damon, who has died aged 84, was an American actor best known to British viewers for his role in ITC’s 1968 series, The Champions. On home turf, however, Damon is associated for his epic stint in medical based TV soap, General Hospital (1977-2013).   In The Champions, Damon played Craig Stirling, one of three secret agents working for the Geneva based Nemesis organisation. When Stirling and his partners Sharron Macready, played by Alexandra Bastedo, and Richard Barrett, played by William Gaunt, are shot down over the Himalayas, their Tibetan saviours gift them telepathic powers, extra strength and heightened sensory skills.    The Champions’ fusion of voguish spy caper with eastern mysticism and sci-fi trappings saw the programme run for thirty episodes. Damon’s Stirling was the team’s de facto leader, a dashing pilot, whose steely American cool was a neat counterpoint to Macready and Barrett’s Englishness.   

Doin’ it For the Kids the ESTATE Way – 13 Snapshots    1. ‘Is it comin’ back next year?’ asked the little girl on her bike beside the 40-foot shipping container in the car park beside North Edinburgh Arts in Muirhouse, where it had mysteriously arrived at the end of May.    It was her fourth or fifth visit to  ESTATE , Jimmy Cauty’s dystopian model village housed in the container, and she brought a different friend every time.   ‘Is it scary?’ asked her pal. The girl shook her head wisely, confident of her own experience, despite the rumbles coming from inside the container as smoke billowed out.   ‘How come you keep coming back?’ I asked her.   Her face lit up.   ‘It’s something to do!’      2.   ESTATE  consists of four model tower blocks built to 1:24 scale and standing about 2 metres high. Uninhabited, these less than des-res constructions have previously been appropriated in different ways.  One was made up of ‘Residential Live-Work-Die Units’ ‘Owned by the Residents, Controlled b