Coffee-Table Notes

Studio 24, Edinburgh 3 stars Mark E Smith is the greatest theatre director since Polish enfant terrible Tadeusz Kantor last walked the land. Far from the shambling eccentricities of the aging drunk he’s too often derided as, Smith’s onstage interventions are calculated forays of social engineering. On the first date of a tour to promote new album Your Future our Clutter, such provocative strategies are in evidence from the off. Video mash-up artist and regular tour support Safi Sniper gets peoples backs up by making a contorted Barbara Streisand sound like X Ray Spex chanteuse Poly Styrene, there’s a set list projected either side of the stage bearing only a scant relation to what’s actually played, and the band are on fire before a black clad Smith makes a typically imperious entrance. About half the album is disposed of without incident, a pigeon-chested Smith a fabled mix of vulnerability and majesty. There’s a thrilling run through album highlight Cowboy George, which sounds li

The Arches, Glasgow 4 stars Glasgow International’s performance related strand this year speaks volumes about where artists are at right now. As its centerpiece, this GI commissioned thirteen-hour epic on the intoxicating but fleeting power of fame, created by performer and collagist Linder to accompany her Kings Ransom (Hybrid Tea) exhibition at the Sorcha Dallas gallery, makes for a beguiling sensory whirlwind. Made in collaboration with composer Stuart McCallum, costume designer Richard Nicoll and a roll-call of dancers, musicians and DJs alongside a core cast of seven, it’s a hypnotically raw experience that explores the intoxicating and corrupting allure of glamour, taking in the transcendent ability of dance in all its participatory forms, from jumping jive to Northern Soul. Divided into twelve hour-long acts, a low-key introduction by the most graceful of Muses promenades us through a multi-faceted underworld where a female King is woken by a Witch while eternal wannabe Puella

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh 4 stars Middle-aged married men are like dogs. Let them off the leash and chances are they’ll stray. This is a given of successful suburbanites the world over. In the human zoo of Edward Albee’s front room, however, it’s much worse. In Albee’s 2002 play it’s high-flying architect Martin’s fiftieth birthday and, while he may build cities, he’s about to declare a taste for the wildlife. Martin’s wife Stevie already smells a rat, and when his old stag of a college room-mate Ross spills the beans about where exactly Martin’s affections lie, gay son Billy gets gruff while a wounded Stevie roars with hurt and anger. Albee’s increasingly extreme scenes from a marriage are a taboo-busting, liberal-baiting set of provocations that provide a typically vicious critique of an already subverted nuclear family. If this sounds bleak, think again. Because, as Dominic Hill’s production pushes Martin and Stevie’s hyper-articulate linguistic pedantry into increasingly self-re

When Penetration played Edinburgh’s Citrus Club a couple of weeks before Christmas 2009 as part of a mini season of old time ‘punk’ bands, the County Durham based combo sounded a whole lot different from The Lurkers, 999 and co. It wasn’t the audience of somewhat grizzled looking middle-aged men sporting squeezed-on black t-shirts that gave Penetration their edge. Nor was it the music, which, while possessed with an ear for infectious power pop melodies infinitely more sophisticated than their spiky-topped peers, was hardly breaking musical boundaries. The real attraction was the dynamic figure centre stage dressed in black, leaning provocatively out past the monitors or else down on her knees. With a microphone clutched in both hands and the swoopingly melodramatic voice of a coarsened choir-girl, the band’s kohl-eyed front-woman could have passed for someone in their mid-twenties rocking a Joan Jett look. As it is, Pauline Murray first sang with Penetration in 1977. Over three de

Citizens Theatre, Glasgow 3 stars A shell-shocked man can get away with murder. Or so it seems in Graham Greene’s very English Second World War noir, brought to life in Daniel Jamieson’s adaptation by director Nikki Sved’s Theatre Alibi company. It’s not just the way the befuddled hero of the piece Arthur Rowe somewhat gamely chances the arm - and a few body parts besides - of his exotic German visitor Anna after losing his memory when a bomb went off in his face. It’s more the way he goes on the run from his own guilt as a blitzed London becomes a symbol of his psychological purging following the death of his wife. It all start with a piece of cake won at a village fete. From such innocent beginnings, Arthur is thrust into a Kafkaesque labyrinth populated by spiritualist spooks, bucolic book-sellers, vanishing private eyes and swing-filled boarding houses, possibly of ill-repute. Throw in a dodgy doctor, a double agent, a couple of dead bodies and some hidden micro-film the entire pl

Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, Thu 6 September For a quarter of a century, Whitehouse have existed in a flabby imaginary hinterland where late cock-er-knee geezer Mike Reid duets with shamed gang-master Gary Glitter. Or at least that’s how it seems as the double act of William Bennett on old-school techno clatter and Philip Best on incomprehensible potty-mouthed harangues play their first ever Edinburgh show, a treat made ever more possible since Bennett took up residence here. Named after deceased anti-porn campaigner Mary Whitehouse, the duo’s shtick is simple. Two middle-aged geezers in market-trader shades offload a bucket load of venom before whipping their shirts off to show off their pasty flesh, throw X-Factor shapes and indulge in a spot of casual frottage. This is hardcore, then, on every level. Except, not really, because for all the sturm-und-drang relentlessness, their camp, cheeky-chappy charm comes on more Grumbleweeds than guerrilla warfare, resembling a pissed-up Gilbert

Still Game It may be 15 years since the last album by Happy Mondays, but as Neil Cooper finds out, Shaun Ryder refuses to act middle-aged ‘Hola!’ Shaun Ryder is just back from Spain, and has clearly been learning the language. In between shows leading up to next week’s T on the Fringe gig, though, the surprisingly sharp and decidedly affable Happy Mondays frontman is at home, ‘catching up on me telly. I’m really liking Heroes just now.’ Such an image of domesticity is a far cry from Happy Mondays’ Madchester heyday, when, by melding indie guitars to dancefloor shuffle, they more or less invented Baggy, democratising the dancefloor as they went. The Mondays’ shambolic gang mentality was a long way from the too-cool-for-school attitude that then prevailed in a music scene geared towards posh-boy students. Ryder and co proved anyone could do it. As original Mondays Ryder, Bez and Gaz Whelan return with Uncle Dysfunktional, the band’s first album of new material in 15 years, just how