Coffee-Table Notes

A few weeks ago, artistic directors of Birds of Paradise Theatre Company past and present met up to take stock. It had been thirty years, after all, since the foundation of what has become Scotland’s premiere producers of theatre created and performed by disabled artists. With current company boss Robert Softley Gale gathering alongside his former co-director Garry Robson and their predecessors Morven Gregor and founding director Andrew Dawson on the eve of a tour of Rob Drummond’s dark comedy about the benefits system, Don’t. Make. Tea., this made for quite a summit meeting.   Among the many things discussed, Dawson reminded Softley Gale how he had visited Softley Gale’s school to present a workshop on the then freshly founded Birds of Paradise. Keen to get young people involved, Softley Gale was invited to take part, only to tell Dawson he was far too busy.   While Softley Gale’s interest in theatre developed while a student at the University of Glasgow studying Computer Science and

“Can you hear me, Deborah?’   Deborah Pearson looks like she’s lip-synching at the start of our conversation about The Talent, the Canadian writer/performer/director’s collaboration with Gemma Paintin and Jim Stenhouse, aka Action Hero, which plays at Summerhall for a week as part of the England based artist focused Horizon Showcase. As is the way of things these days, Pearson and I are attempting to talk over Zoom, the international video communications platform that rose to prominence during the pandemic induced lockdown.   As I shout into the silence, I’m conscious of sounding like Clem Fandango, one of the pompous hipsters directing arch thespian Steven Toast during the old luv’s voiceover gigs in Matt Berry and Arthur Mathews’ TV sit-com, Toast of London. This fits in all too well with The Talent’s focus on a voiceover artist taking direction for a variety of presentations in her recording booth limbo.   “I had this idea of how interesting it would be to see a show which is just a

According to Wikipedia, Fereydoun Farrokhzad was an Iranian pop sensation who, between 1962 and 1992, was a household name in his home country. His life as a TV star, showman and sex symbol saw him sell out a series of multiple shows at the Royal Albert Hall in London.   As a political activist not shy of speaking out against the Islamic government following the 1979 revolution, Farrokhzad was forced into exile, and latterly lived in Bonn, Germany. It was here his body was found in his apartment in 1992, having been stabbed repeatedly in the face and upper torso. While his killing was widely believed by many to have been sanctioned by the Islamic government, his murder has never been solved.     This is the starting point for Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, Javaad Alipoor’s latest exploration of the relationship between real life and the digital world. Jumping down assorted online rabbit holes, Alipoor takes in Iranian pop music and the murder mystery podcast boom in a

Ghosts are everywhere in ChildMinder, Ian McClure’s new play which opens at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh this month as part of a short three-date tour.   Kolbrún Björt Sigfúsdóttir’sproduction of McClure’s play sees Cal MacAninch play Joseph Croan, a fifty-something child psychiatrist returning home from New York to Edinburgh. Here, Joseph’s luxury flat turns out to be the site of the former hospital room where he once assessed a thirteen-year-old boy in what became a life changing moment for both of them. With the boy’s spirit remaining, Joseph becomes haunted on every level.   Given that McClure is himself a consultant child psychiatrist who once worked in Edinburgh’s former Royal Infirmary where the residential Quartermile development now stands, all this sounds pretty close to home.   “I think one of the big themes of my career has been the awareness of the vulnerability of young boys and young men in society, and what gets branded now as this idea of toxic masculinity,” McClure

  MURRAY Melvin couldn't go to Joan Littlewood's funeral two Sundays ago, even though the death a few weeks ago of the woman whose Theatre Workshop company at Stratford East redefined post-war British theatre forever with the mighty Oh What A Lovely War visibly grieves him still. His eyes well up at the mere mention of her name, but he can't help himself talking about the often-fierce woman who gave him and an entire generation of actors a go in the spotlight. ''Her death was the passing of my youth,'' Melvin says gravely. ''It wasn't expected. We're all quite devastated by it, because we thought she'd outlive us all, she was such a domineering character in our lives.'' Story after story, each peppered with hushed asides and punctuated with prim, precise, near-Tai Chi-like gestures, gushes lovingly from the archetypal Littlewood actor; a back-street unknown who went from sweeping the stage to the West End, Broadway, and beyond, an

  Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom!   That's pretty much how rock'n'roll started - not with a bang, but with a guttural shriek of libidinous intent. As the opening line of the song, Tutti Frutti, as inimitably delivered by Little Richard, the phrase lent itself perfectly to John Byrne's TV drama series about a first-generation r'n'r band's late flowering revival beyond the chickenin-a-basket cabaret circuit.   Byrne's Tutti Frutti was about the fallout of that initial musical explosion, in which emigre art student Danny McGlone returns to Glasgow from a decade in New York for the funeral of his brother and lead vocalist of beat boom veterans, The Majestics, Big Jazza McGlone.   It wasn't quite 20 years ago today that Tutti Frutti hit our screens, but, with a mere four terrestrial channels to play with then, it feels like it comes from a more innocent age. Originally shown in a graveyard slot on BBC1 opposite ageing-biker drama, Boon, its mix of pathos, int

  Milky coffee is dripping off John Byrne's moustache. Given his facial hair's already droopy protrusion, the effect is somewhere between wild west and cartoon comic. We're sitting in the Tuesday morning heart of Nairn's cafe society, ostensibly to discuss the Traverse Theatre's 25th anniversary production of Byrne's play, The Slab Boys, which opened this weekend.For those not already aware, The Slab Boys moseys through a day in the life of Spanky and Phil, a couple of likely lads who work as factory fodder in a 1950s carpet factory in Paisley. Both have ideas beyond their station, and fully intend wise-assing their way out of town and to the top.   It sounds a simple enough yarn now, but, coming as it did at the fag end of the 1970s, it set the theatre world alight, reaching the west end, and later Broadway. With its follow-up plays, Cuttin' A Rug and Still Life, it formed what we now know as The Slab Boys Trilogy, which will be performed in full in the new

  John Byrne looks like an artist. Well, he is an artist. And a playwright, film director, and set designer. But, in the studied cool of his dungarees, waistcoat, and carefully groomed moustache ensemble, he looks like an artist, full of beatnik bohemian cool as he takes a fag break from rehearsals of his latest play. And, in art as in life, image and self-mythology is everything. Byrne understands this, as do too the wave of self-conscious self-promoting art stars of the Emin and Hirst variety. And, way way back, before we were famous for 15 minutes and counting downwards, Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde understood it, too.Who?     Okay, the two Roberts, both graduates of Byrne's own alma mater, Glasgow School of Art, 25 years before him, may have been all but airbrushed out of art history, but in the forties and fifties, before their Scotsman abroad act became a parody of itself, they created a considerable splash in the prissy London gallery scene and were recognised as the

Behind the Games Room door there is laughter. Then, from within the faded, cluttered grandeur of the top floor of Glasgow's BBC Club, Robbie Coltrane's dry but fruity transatlantic Scots twang can be easily discerned.   It is the end of the day for rehearsals of The Brother's Suit, Peter McDougall's new work for A Play, A Pie And A Pint, the ambitious series of lunchtime drama at Oran Mor, Glasgow, that has reinvigorated Scotland's theatrical old guard. The play will mark Coltrane's first appearance on a stage in this country for 15 years.  The BBC Club, meanwhile, hasn't seen Coltrane grace its doors for even longer.    "I haven't been in here since we did A Kick Up The Eighties, " Coltrane muses as he tucks himself into the corner of the room like a naughty, if somewhat oversize, schoolboy. The "alternative" sketch show is just a memory now, though the club was "a good place for meeting people. Not that it's changed much, &