Coffee-Table Notes

If Susan Wooldridge hadn't have grown up in an artistic household, she may not have gone on to become a distinguished star of stage and screen in era-defining TV drama The Jewel in the Crown, for which she was nominated for a BAFTA. This was an award Wooldridge went on to win as Best Supporting Actress in John Boorman's film, Hope and Glory. Wooldridge's parents were actress Margaretta Scott and composer John Wooldridge, who exposed her and her brother Hugh, now a theatre director, to a world of culture that saw many bohemian types around. All of which sounds like the perfect grounding for playing Judith Bliss in the Citizens Theatre's forthcoming production of Noel Coward's play, Hay Fever. Written in 1924 and first produced a year later, Coward's play is set over one lively weekend in the bohemian Bliss family's country house, where they hold increasingly crazed court to assorted guests from a less hysterically inclined world. Together, they become witne

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars It begins with a celebration, Mariem Omari's verbatim unveiling of honour-based domestic violence among the Muslim community. As Indian snacks are handed out by the cast of Omari's play in the theatre foyer before the show while percussionist Gurjit Sidhu beats out a triumphal rhythm on a dhol, it stresses just how vital to Muslim culture a wedding ceremony is in terms of expressing a sense of unity. Reality beyond the big day, alas, doesn't always work out as well, as women's real-life litanies of brutality are cut-up between four actresses. Together they tell of arranged marriages and extravagant dowrys being foisted upon them while still children, of beatings, rape and the eternal fear of family shame. Voice is given too to the male perpetrators of violence, who, through actor Manjot Sumal, talk of pressure, stress and other outside forces claimed to justify their actions. Produced by Amina – Muslim Women's Resour

Citizens Theatre, Glasgow Three stars Red, white and blue are all over the place in Drew Taylor's contribution to the Glasgow-wide Take Me Somewhere performance festival. It's there on the carpet made up of Union Jack and Stars and Stripes flags, if not on the line-up of show-room dummies who sport Hitler-style moustaches and little else at the back of the Citizens Theatre's Circle Studio. It's definitely there in the co-ordinated retro apparel worn by the show's performers, Isobel McArthur and David Rankine, as they welcome the audience into Taylor's loose-knit political cabaret. Don't be fooled by the title's self-help styled implications. As the winner of the Somewhere New strand of Take Me Somewhere, which solicited reinventions of classic works in ways which playwright David Hare probably wouldn't approve of, Taylor's piece looks to Brecht for inspiration. Under Taylor's direction, the pair attempt to tackle the state of various

Last Friday night, Neu! Reekie! hosted an event at Summerhall in Edinburgh called Neu! Reekie! say Where Are We Now? For those who maybe aren't aware, Neu! Reekie! is a night run by poet Michael Pedersen and founder of 1990s lit-zine Rebel Inc , Kevin Williamson. For the last five or six years, this dynamic cross-generational duo has presented a series of increasingly ambitious events which have mixed and matched bills of spoken-word, music and experimental, mainly animated short films. Neu! Reekie! initially put on shows to audiences of a couple of hundred or so, first at the Scottish Book Trust, then later dove-tailing between Summerhall and Pilrig Church. As success begat success, the events grew bigger and the performers included more high-profile names, including two makars. Somewhere along the way, Neu! Reekie received funding from Creative Scotland. By that time, Neu! Reekie! had become a thing. There were Burns Nights and a road show around Scotland that involved a l

Good afternoon everyone, I just wanted to say a few words about today's mass visit to Inverleith House. My name is Neil Cooper, and I'm a journalist who's been writing about the ongoing closure of Inverleith House as a contemporary art gallery since it was closed last October. First of all, I wanted to thank everyone for coming out today on a lovely February afternoon. You've not only helped increase the footfall of the Garden, but more importantly you've shown how much the people of Edinburgh have been saddened by the closure of the gallery. The last time there was a mass visit was on the final day of the 30th anniversary exhibition, I Still Believe in Miracles, and up until that point, everybody here was able to come down to Inverleith House on a Sunday afternoon and see some of the greatest contemporary art in the world. Sadly we can't do that anymore, because the managers of the Garden say that Inverleith House can't wash its face financi

Gareth Nicholls didn't realise how competitive the world of parenthood could be until he had a child of his own. A year or so on, and taking the reins at various collective activities with assorted parent/baby combos, he has witnessed first hand how easy it is for a keeping up with the Jones' type atmosphere to creep in to everyday affairs. This experience has been something the Glasgow-based theatre director has been able to channel into his forthcoming Tron Theatre production of God of Carnage, French writer Yasmina Reza's excoriatingly funny play about how two sets of parents deal with an altercation between their children at the local park. While Nicholls himself hasn't had recourse to indulge in some of the extreme behaviour the four characters in Reza's play embark on, he nevertheless recognises how civilised discourse's descent into brattish antagonism relates to a much bigger malaise. “It's a play that's really about asking how communities

If ever there was an artist you'd least expect to burst into a massed chorus of sha-la-las, it’s Alasdair Roberts. Here, after all, is a singer, song-writer and musician steeped in a Scottish folk tradition forged by his Callendar roots even as he found a kindred spirit in Will Oldham's similarly doleful backwoods laments. Under the name of Appendix Out, Roberts played the indie circuit with an ever changing line-up, and proved himself way ahead of the curve in terms of the embrace of traditional music which has since permeated more mainstream culture. As the eight albums and other sundry releases under his own name have proved, however, Roberts is no tweed-sporting faux-folk flunky. Rather, his explorations and reconstructions of the arcane have sounded thrillingly contemporary, even as they looked to a more spectral past. Roberts' Oldham-produced 2005 No Earthly Man album may have been a collection of ancient murder ballads, but at times it seemed to channel the Velvet