Coffee-Table Notes

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars Things seem initially jolly at the start of Lung Ha Theatre Company’s new look at Anton Chekhov’s piece of end of the century ennui, presented in co-production with the Helsinki-based folk music department of the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts. This is despite the aching void that hangs over the increasingly empty house that provides the nearest thing to a social whirl of the army occupied town. It’s young Irina’s birthday, and her big sister Olga is going to make it as fun as can be, even if their other sibling Masha would rather sprawl herself on the sofa with studiedly bored intent. Adrian Osmond’s new version of the play manages to pare down the sprawl of Chekhov’s original to a ninety-minute meditation on the meaning of life and the seeming lack of it in Maria Oller’s wide-open production performed by a cast of twenty on Karen Tennent’s wood-lined set.   Emma McCaffrey sets the tone as a perennially buoyant Olg

Joseph Arkley was never meant to be a man who would be king. If things had gone to plan, the former politics student would have embarked on a respectable career which could have led him to a ringside seat in the offices of power. Now here he is, about to take the stage at Perth Theatre in the title role in a new production of Richard III, Shakespeare’s slyest and most complex of charismatic villains. According to Arkley, Richard is also “one of the great stand-up comics. He’s somewhere between Malcolm Tucker and Limmy. That’s what’s coming out at the moment. He’s a sociopath, but you love him.” The influences on Arkley’s interpretation of Richard are telling. Both Malcolm Tucker, played by Peter Capaldi in political sit-com The Thick of It, and real-life comedian Limmy combine a driven ferocity with unfettered hilarity. They are key as well to an approach which aims to remain faithful to the play, but with extra added drive. “It goes at quite a pace,” Arkley says of Perth

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow Four stars The facts of life come fast and hard in Andrew Panton’s expansive rendering of writer Steven Sater and composer Duncan Sheik’s 2006 musical reimagining of Frank Wedekind’s nineteenth century template for angst-ridden teen TV. As classroom radical Melchoir Gabor, his first love Wendla and the rest of the gang come of age with all the pains that go with it, a frighteningly familiar set of psychological scars are exposed. Sexual abuse, suicide and under-age pregnancy are all in the mix, brought to flesh and blood life by a mighty cast of 18 musical theatre students, with Ann Louise Ross and Barrie Hunter from Dundee Rep’s ensemble company playing assorted grown-ups with grotesque relish. Played out on designer Kenneth MacLeod’s testosterone-charged gym hall set, when actors aren’t in a scene, they either sit on benches in single-sex rows like they’re at a school disco or else drape themselves across vaulting horses and desks

Maria Oller was in the midst of rehearsals for her new production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters when the news came through that Lung Ha, the learning disabled based theatre company she has been artistic director of since 2009 had lost its main funding from Creative Scotland. Up until then, Lung Ha had been a Regularly Funded Organisation (RFO), which gave the company three-year’s worth of security to plan ahead. For a company as unique as Lung Ha, such security was vital, as it was with any of the theatre companies and arts organisations who had also had the rug pulled from under them. “The hardest part for me was telling the actors,” says Oller. “We were in the middle of Three Sisters, and they were working so hard, so to let them know that our work isn’t considered to be worth regular funding was difficult.” The response of Lung Ha’s large ensemble, who had been working on the show for months, was telling. “They were active straight away,” says Oller. “They pulled together

Assembly Hall, Edinburgh Three stars Winners and losers are everywhere in Johnny McKnight and Anita Vettesse’s new play with songs for a co-production between Grid Iron and Stellar Quines theatre companies. It’s bingo night, and hopes are high for the regulars who flock to the local Mecca. Desperate thirty-something Daniella especially has her fingers crossed after a financial mess of her own making looks set to catch up with her. With her hatchet-faced mother Mary and her best pal Ruth in tow, it’s eyes down for an all or nothing game to end them all. As it stands, Jemima Levick’s loose-knit production tugs in so many directions it’s as if those creating it got bored with their own initial idea and decided to ramp things up to preposterous proportions in order to make things more interesting. One minute it’s a girls’ night out style feel-good romp; the next it’s a turbo-charged fantastical sit-com, barely based in reality and peppered with potty-mouthed one-liners, pink-st

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Three stars One kiss is all it takes for everyone to understand each other in Catriona Lexy Campbell and Mairi Sine Campbell’s new play. Linguistically that is, as ancient and modern are brought to rollickingly intimate life by the Gaelic-based Theatre Gu Leor (Theatre Galore) company in the Tron’s Vic Bar en route to an extensive cross-Scotland tour. The set-up is the sort of ghastly tartan-draped corporate function whose perma-grinning hostess Lisa makes bogus claims of preserving culture while blatantly intent on flogging it off to the highest bidder. Think McWetherspoon by way of Trumpageddon. With the audience ushered into a cabaret table arrangement by Lisa’s step-daughter Eilidh and serenaded by Eddie’s oh-so-couthy accordion playing, the dirt from Harris is unearthed along with a bottle of David Beckham-branded whisky. This causes the corporate shindig to be disrupted on an epic scale by seventeenth century poet Mairi Ruadh. Which is when both th

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Four stars Ex-con Jackie says it with flowers when he’s reunited with his addict girlfriend Veronica at the start of Stephen Adly Guirgis’ bleakly funny 2011 play. That’s about as sweet as it gets, however, in Andy Arnold’s new production of a piece seen here for the first time in the UK outside London. When Jackie spies a stranger’s hat amongst the debris of Veronica’s apartment, any hopes of a loving reunion are turned upside down as he lets off steam, first to his seemingly squeaky-clean AA sponsor Ralph D and his wife Victoria, then to Cousin Julio, who gives him some healthy if funny-tasting food for thought. What follows over the next 100 minutes of this co-production between the Tron and the Cardiff-based Sherman Theatre is a series of potty-mouthed rapid-fire exchanges, with Jackie falling off the wagon en route to discovering some painful home-truths. This makes for a series of street-smart verbal riffs soaked in downbeat New York gallows humo