Coffee-Table Notes

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars Talking about the weather may be the great British talking point, but storm and sunshine become matters of life and death in David Haig's new World War Two set play. Based on real events leading up to the 1944 D Day landings, the play focuses on Dalkeith-born military meteorologist James Stagg and his sleepless quest to convince General Eisenhower to postpone the assault until a favourable climate prevails. Stagg's main obstacle to being taken seriously is his flamboyant American counterpart, Irving Krick, whose glamour-chasing allure is in stark contrast to Stagg's oddball demeanour. Throw in the fact that Stagg's wife has just gone into labour, and the stage is set for an increasingly urgent culture clash, where victory is celebrated with doughnuts and whisky. Set in a solitary room awash with charts, ringing telephones and a coterie of generals, Haig has constructed a grippingly pacey adventure yarn on the one hand, with Hai

Citizens Theatre, Glasgow Four stars When a troupe of actors wander the stage in civvies and modern-day attitudes before the lights dim and they switch into character, it's a commonplace enough theatrical device these days. When the cast of Stephen Jeffreys' period romp concerning the Second Earl of Rochester's stubborn flight into self-destruction top and tail Dominic Hill's production with such an approach, however, it becomes a device that matters. Jeffreys' version of Rochester, after all, is a man who courted infamy like the most indulgent of rock stars, whose entire crash-and-burn lifestyle was a performance to die for. Unlike the coterie of preening fops, literary groupies and even Elizabeth Barry, the actress he fell for, however, he refused to play to type. Rochester's excesses were no act, but something that fuelled his soul, even as they killed him. Hill's revival of Jeffreys' twenty year old play casts Martin Hutson as an initially charming b

Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh Three stars Like Brit Pop, the resurgence of interest in the 1990s wave of 'in-yer-face' theatre among a new generation perhaps points up a lack of anything else to grab hold of, however much some of the originals might have faked it. If playwright Philip Ridley was at the vanguard of that Thatcher-sired storming of the barricades, this revival of his most controversial work from 2005 by the St Andrew's University sired Riot Productions in association with Edinburgh's Black Dingo company makes clear that its brutal mix of gangster movie iconography and dystopian future-shock has lost none of its edge. Twenty-something Elliot bursts into an abandoned flat at the play's start like he's seeking sanctuary from a war zone. In fact, Elliot is pushing a rare and transformative drug that comes in the form of butterflies, and he and his brother Darren are alternative party planners for adrenaline-junky city boys who want to live out Vietnam fanta

There's a joke doing the rounds of the internet as jokes do, but which originated in America. It's about a man waiting in line in a grocery store behind a woman, who's speaking on her mobile phone in a foreign language. Once the woman has finished her call, the man approaches her, and points out that, as she's in America, she would need to speak English. “Excuse me?” says the woman, before the man very slowly, as if talking to a child, suggests to her that if she wants to speak Mexican, then she should go back to Mexico. To stress his point, the man points out that the woman was in America, where they speak English. “Sir,” says the woman. “I was speaking Navajo. If you want to speak English, go back to England.” Despite its locale, this joke seems to be the perfect illustration of the themes behind this year's Mayfesto, the Tron Theatre's annual look at politically tinged drama, which this year themes its programme around the all too timely notions of Colonisati

Bongo Club, Edinburgh Three stars When one of the carpet-load of balloons that line the club space where the young Creative Electric company's latest show is being performed accidentally pops, it's as if the bang is calling time on a particular moment in the four performers lives before they move on to the next one. In each corner of what looks like a subterranean playroom, each of the cast – two male, two female, germ-free adolescents all - stand before a full-length mirror, recounting what they see in soliloquies of self-image that reveal more than their masked personae intend. Over the course of the next forty minutes or so, those masks are put to one side as each opens up to reveal what it's like to live in a world where image is everything, and social media status creates a kind of playground pecking order. The candour with which the quartet lay bare their growing pains go beyond confessional in Hannah Marshall's touchy-feely immersive production to become a choreo

Village Theatre, East Kilbride Neil Cooper Three stars A smashed-up gold-coloured picture frame surrounds the front of the stage for Rapture Theatre's revival of John Byrne's 1960s update of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. It's as if the action that follows behind it in Michael Emans' production is that of a dust-laden and damaged old master that's been left at the back of a junk shop, out of time and past its best. This is exactly the state that  Jimmy Chisholm's Varick, his niece Shona and a community wrapped up in their collective torpor find themselves in at the start of Michael Emans' production, trapped as they are in their rural idyll in north-eastern Scotland. The times, however, are a changing, as the arrival of Shona's boorish art critic father Sandy and his swingingly young bride Elaine searching for the shock of the new makes clear. Even local whipping boy Willie John has worked up a few incongruous-sounding Beatles numbers into hi

Brassed Off, King's Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars When an unemployed miner dressed in a clown suit attempts to hang himself from the machinery he once worked among to the strains of a brass band arrangement of Jerusalem, it's a damning indictment of how one of Britain's greatest industries was treated with contempt. It's also an image which takes Paul Allen's stage version of Mark Herman's 1996 film beyond being purely feel-good to something bigger and braver in Damian Cruden's production, an alliance between the Touring Consortium, York Theatre Royal and the Octagon Theatre Bolton. Like the film, Allen's play is set in the fictional Yorkshire town of Grimley, where, a decade after the 1984-85 miners strike collapsed, the pits are about to finally close. One of the few lifelines for the town is its brass band, run with messianic fervour by ex miner Danny, played by an impassioned and understated John McArdle. While families become increasingly divided, J