Coffee-Table Notes

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars If you believe the elaborate fable told from a storybook between acts during this greatest hits compendium from Edinburgh’s live art cabaret extravaganza, the night’s roots stem from the early 1980s. In their boundary-pushing diversity, some of the acts actually do recall what used to be called alternative cabaret during that era. Either way, the eight bite-size performances culled from the last five years of speak-easy one-nighters revealed Anatomy as key players in the city’s ever fertile artistic underground. Hosted by Anatomy founders Harry Josephine Giles and Ali Maloney, the show opened Rosa Postlethwaite’s tellingly named Without Whom We Would Not Be Here Tonight. Lewis Sherlock followed with The Undercog, in which Sherlock shadow boxed with funding bodies. In Sanitise, Jordan & Skinner choreographed the domestic excesses of cleaning a toilet with wordless wit, while in Uranus, Moreno Solinas sang arias to illustrate sexual n

The Playhouse, Edinburgh Four stars It may be coincidence that the not so wonderful Wizard of Oz is the only character who speaks with an American accent in the latest touring revival of composer Stephen Schwartz and writer Winnie Holzman’s prequel to L Frank Baum’s fictional fantasia by way of the Hollywood classic. It is telling too, perhaps, that the mechanical façade that gives this bumbling little guy power over an entire nation appears to also have terrible hair. There are knowing nods like this aplenty in Schwartz and Holzman’s creation, brought to life with steampunk stylings by director Joe Mantello in epic fashion. It starts out with the death of the Wicked Witch of the West at the hands of an unseen kid with fancy shoes called Dorothy. Things then rewind to reveal how a green-skinned geek with attitude called Elphaba and her blonde ambition-laden nemesis turned bestie Galinda became the binary epitome of good and evil. In what is essentially a high school dram

Kieran Hurley didn’t know what to expect when he hitched up in a tiny car and embarked on a road trip around rural Perthshire to talk to the local farming community about creating a new play. With Perth Theatre artistic director Lu Kemp also on board, writer and performer Hurley’s intention was to weave together assorted voices representing those living on the frontline of communities often marginalised from political discourse. It is they, however, who will be forced to square up to the consequences of recent decisions, with their already parlous livelihoods potentially at stake in whatever new landscape emerges out of an increasingly fractious post Brexit referendum climate. Initiated by Kemp, the result is A Six Inch Layer of Topsoil and the Fact it Rains, an evocatively titled piece of verbatim theatre performed as a ceilidh play by actor/musicians Aly Macrae and Melody Grove. Rather than presenting the show in Perth Theatre itself, Kemp has opted to tour it around a network o