Issue 610

A shared experience

21 Aug 2008

Age is not a factor for the Armed Forces. It is shared experience that counts and each member of the forces has his or her own experiences to draw upon and assist others. Every year the Royal Regiment of Scotland hosts an activity weekend for cadets…

Barry & Stuart: Part-time Warlocks

Part-time warlocks, full-time fun

14 Aug 2008

It's hard to imagine Paul Daniels onstage with a joint that transforms into a gold chain, and there's no danger you'd have caught him magically turning a porn mag into a map of Iraq. Describing themselves as the 'anti-Paul Daniels of magic', these…

Chuck Palahniuk - Snuff love

14 Aug 2008

Chuck Palahniuk tells such stark tales that people faint at his readings. Doug Johnstone crosses his legs, girds his loins and chats to the guru of gore

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller

A childhood state of imaginative possibility

14 Aug 2008

Over six pieces comprising kinetic sculpture, projections, visceral jokes, total immersion sensory works, whole room architectural installations and, with ‘Opera for a Small Room’ (pictured), an awe-inspiringly perfect sound sculpture, Cardiff and Bures…

Louis CK

Domestic policy

14 Aug 2008

Championed by Ricky Gervais, loved by late-night US TV and censored by his wife, Louis CK is preparing to launch his brand of outrageous confessional comedy on the UK. Claire Prentice finds out just how far he's prepared to go. Louis CK is driving…

Russell Howard

Beat surrender

14 Aug 2008

Russell Howard can't resist a spot of testicular tomfoolery but, he tells Jay Richardson, his new act is less Buster Gonad than Jack Kerouac With his infectious, wide-eyed optimism currently offering a counterbalance to Frankie Boyle's unflinching…

Simon Munnery - Festival veteran

14 Aug 2008

Simon Munnery shares his lessons learned from 21 years on the Fringe

Take 5: Plays with a gruesome body count

14 Aug 2008

Topping the morbidity league with plane upon planeful of passengers heading to a nasty end, Charlie Victor Romeo takes transcripts from black box recorders and re-enacts those scary final minutes of sky-high tension. Not every passenger dies, but most…

The Vanishing Point

Awe inspiring spectacle on stilts

14 Aug 2008

The Vanishing Point is sheer delight. The stilt walkers, communicating to each other through some sort of primeval whale song, trace a pattern of evolution from dinosaur-like creatures and sexually charged tribal people to, briefly, dead-eyed office…

Jock Tamson’s Bairns - Child's play

14 Aug 2008

Bands have a saying that you are only as young as your youngest member. That places Jock Tamson’s Bairns at about 33 years old, the age of their newest member, the fiddler Anna Wendy Stevenson, who joined the legendary Scottish folk combo in 2006. ‘I…

Lisa Appignanesi - Express yourself

14 Aug 2008

Kate Gould finds Lisa Appignanesi on good form as she discusses the history of health and the future of censorship

Office Party

Tasteless delights

14 Aug 2008

Seldom were ham and cheese so well combined in a sandwich as in Cal McCrystal’s interactive version of that familiar titular institution, the office party. The show may be disrupted here and there by its structure, but this seems to do nothing to dampen…

Gavin Francis

Trekking round the back door of Europe

14 Aug 2008

Edinburgh-based GP-turned-adventurer and travel writer Gavin Francis’ next book – charting an epic motorcycle schlep from Orkney to Sydney – will finish on an ironic endnote. Having survived the mean streets of Beirut and New Delhi on its journey, his…

John Pinette

Say yeah yeah to big bad John

14 Aug 2008

Since getting Jerry and co locked up in the grand finale of Seinfeld, John Pinette has spent the last decade making a name for himself on Broadway and in Hollywood. Having worked with the likes of Sinatra, Arnie and Travolta, he may not need the Fringe…

Pajama Men

Fantastic yet familiar physical horseplay

14 Aug 2008

The Fringe traditionally gets its unfair share of headlines for being a hotbed of nudity and a feast of skin-baring. But two guys in their jimmy-jams before the watershed? What gives? The massively innovative North American double act of Shenoah Allen…

Yasser

An original take on the Middle East conflict

14 Aug 2008

The concept of national identity becomes ever more fragile in the absence of a nation state. A people bereft of the glue that binds modern communities together – whether real or imagined – risk having their identity defined by others, moulded by…

5 Questions - Krishma Bachoo

14 Aug 2008

5 words to describe the Obscene vs Volume experience? Friendly, anything goes, genre-less, bass-fuelled, mayhem. 4 things you love about the DJs/acts on the bill? Everyone is playing for free for Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centre’s & Myeloma UK. MC…

Mudfire

Awe inspiring spectacle on stilts

14 Aug 2008

I picked the wrong day to go and see US acrobatic company Carpetbag Brigade's two Fringe offerings. After 48 hours of rain their outdoor performance space at Sweet ECA had turned swamp and the company was making do with a hastily-converted studio space.

We All Fall Down

Playing with the Plague

14 Aug 2008

Who'd have thought the Black Death could be so much fun? Or that a tale with such a strong moral heart could be so full of laughs and silliness? The story of two 17th century villages both blighted with the plague, the show explores the selfish and…

Festival of Politics

14 Aug 2008

Meanwhile, over at the Scottish Parliament... the Festival of Politics is back for a fourth year and making visiting Fringe slebs really work for their money, as Simon Callow leads a discussion on changing rights for LGBT communities in the UK, and…

Messin’ Around

14 Aug 2008

One of the London Jazz Café’s longest running nights (12 years and counting) takes a trip north for the Festival. DJ Adrian Gibson will be mixing up ‘the good stuff’ – jazz, funk, Latin and soul – as showcased on over 70 compilation albums he’s produced…

Andrew Mueller - I Wouldn’t Start From Here

14 Aug 2008

A few weeks after 9/11, Andrew Mueller – rock journalist, travel writer and self-ascribed hack – browsed the list of Designated Foreign Terrorist Organisations released by the US State Department and wondered what it might be like to be one of those…

Ben Kingsley - The Wackness

14 Aug 2008

Seeing Gandhi with crazy hair is even weirder than watching 64-year-old Sir Ben Kingsley snog 22-year-old Mary Kate Olsen. But fear not, the knighted actor hasn’t had some innovative hair treatment to unpolish his famously shiny snooker ball, he’s…

Amir Nizar Zuabi - Jidariyya

Poetry in motion

14 Aug 2008

Perhaps the greatest psychological pain humans can feel occurs when they are denied language. The sense of frustration that builds from a voice unheard, marginalised or rendered irrelevant by the listener can be overwhelming. This is as true of the…

Esther B Robinson - A Walk Into the Sea

14 Aug 2008

In July 1966, Esther B Robinson’s uncle Danny Williams drove home to Massachusetts, with a shaving kit full of drugs, and took his own life. Thirty-four years later, Esther’s grandmother Nadia came to visit her granddaughter’s workplace at the Warhol…

Headman

14 Aug 2008

When he released his debut album It Rough in 2001 (which contained the single of the same name), Zurich DJ Robi Insinna, aka Headman, helped presage a whole movement. Around the same time, everyone from Belgium’s Soulwax to New York’s LCD Soundsystem…

Future of the Left

Title contenders

14 Aug 2008

You can’t beat a good song title, and Future of the Left have some of the best. The Cardiff based trio’s second single was the thrillingly angry rock of ‘adeadenemyalwayssmellsgood’, and the band’s debut album Curses was peppered with other gems such as…

Unusual Gameplay

14 Aug 2008

Time to burn your joysticks and throw away your control pads as game developers begin shifting away from the norm by introducing some innovative, unorthodox and plain silly methods of play this summer. If you thought the future was here when the Wii hit…

Steven Campbell

14 Aug 2008

In August of last year, one of Scotland’s most renowned contemporary painters died unexpectedly. Steven Campbell’s sadly premature death at the age of 54, caused by a ruptured appendix, was all the more untimely as he was in the midst of preparing for…

Hidden Lane Café-Gallery

14 Aug 2008

The Hidden Lane doesn’t do location, location, location. Start in the ramshackle stretch of Argyle Street between Finnieston and Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery where there’s a growing and diverse range of small, independent bars and dining spots…

Hidden Gardens

Birds suddenly appear

14 Aug 2008

The Hidden Gardens, tucked away behind Tramway, may have been open for five years, but many people aren’t aware of the rich cultural history that’s entrenched in the foundations of the site and built into its design. ‘When the Gardens opened, we…

Watermelon

14 Aug 2008

Scuttling through Glasgow’s West End to meet Gavin O’Brien, owner of the recently refurbished vintage institution Watermelon, I wonder, what on earth am I looking for? Past experience of fusty second-hand hovels hadn’t prepared me for Watermelon’s new…

Broken records

14 Aug 2008

‘It’s never been part of our gameplan to be a cool band,’ says Broken Records’ singer and guitarist Jamie Sutherland. In that case, they better start redrawing the rules right now. Attracting Arcade Fire comparisons like iron filings to a magnet, the…

Prokofiev - The Symphonies

Russian around with the tireless Valery Gergiev

14 Aug 2008

In one of the most exciting orchestral weekends hosted by the Usher Hall, the London Symphony Orchestra appears with its principal conductor, Valery Gergiev, performing all of Prokofiev’s seven symphonies plus the two violin concertos with soloist…

Getting stuck in

14 Aug 2008

Get your tastebuds ready for the launch of Gourmet Glasgow, which offers a rich platter of culinary delights in conjunction with Scotland with Style. The event will celebrate the city's fine foods and restaurants, with over 50 eateries offering special…

Bite the Dust

Polish satire lost in translation

14 Aug 2008

First there is the show that should have been. Originally staged in the late-70s, Bite the Dust is a satirical sideswipe at the military mindset. It proved so controversial in Poland that playwright Tadeusz Rólewicz withdrew the performance rights.

Stefan Golaszewski Speaks About A Girl He Once Loved

Bold, original show from sickeningly talented young performer

14 Aug 2008

Stefan Golaszewski’s a sickeningly talented young man. Squished into a sweaty attic in the Pleasance and armed with nothing more than a handful of props and some banging techo music, the young London lad is bowling over audiences with his first solo…

George Orwell's Coming Up For Air

Funny, tragic stage adaptation of little-known text

14 Aug 2008

What swiftly becomes apparent about this adroit adaptation of George Orwell’s lesser-known 1939 novel is how powerfully it resonates today. Written on the eve of World War II, while the author was in Morocco recovering from an injury sustained fighting…

Esoterica

No ordinary card

14 Aug 2008

The paradox of a culture that loves to see magic and the sixth sense at work, while refusing to believe in either of them, becomes particularly apparent when, sitting in a darkened room watching one man appear to read another man’s mind, your brain…

Borderline

Repetitive beat poetry

14 Aug 2008

The Stone Roses come on, and over in the corner there’s always one monged fella pivoting off the wall. He starts monkey-dancing closer like he thinks he’s Ian Brown, gurning and chewing his face off with the pills. He’s pointing at you. He’s looking you…

Free comedy

A Pandora's Box of PowerPoint and pointlessness

14 Aug 2008

There is a rebellion at the Fringe this year. High venue costs have caused some artists to take matters into their own hands. Doug Stanhope is charging £7349 for a one-off show in someone's living room and the Free Fringe organisations have brought more…

Supper

Food for thought

14 Aug 2008

In any conversation, there’s always another conversation going on beneath the ostensible day to day chat. This premise is the starting point for Supper, which amounts to an intriguing conceit about love, subjectivity and memory. The audience are…

5 Reasons To Go See - Alanis Morissette

14 Aug 2008

She’s massively popular Before we get to any of the juicier reasons for re-igniting your mid-90s fervour for Ms Morissette, let’s lay out the bare statistics of her success. The angry songstress has sold over 55 million albums worldwide, and has scooped…

Kevin Williamson

Writing poetry on the run

14 Aug 2008

‘Rebel Inc involved a lot of chaos and a lot of confusion,’ says Kevin Williamson, founder of the one-time cult Edinburgh imprint. ‘And I can tell you that my days as a publisher are definitely over. I gave it all I could for ten years and wouldn’t go…

Side Dishes

14 Aug 2008

Glasgow’s more experienced diners know full well that the Two Fat Ladies fish restaurants had nothing to do with motorcycling cooks Clarissa and Jennifer, and everything to do with the address of the original site at 88 Dumbarton Road. However, the…

Big Things on the Beach: Garden Gallery

Public art, right on your doorstep

14 Aug 2008

As far as public art initiatives go, it doesn’t get much more DIY or community-focused than this. Twenty-nine separate works, most of which are hosted in the front gardens of Portobello houses, and all of them part of a scenic walking tour of the…

Various - Tighten Up! Deluxe Edition

14 Aug 2008

REGGAE (Trojan/Sanctuary) The times around the birth of Trojan Records were turbulent ones: 1968 witnessed social unrest and uprising from Cuba to Belfast, London to Vietnam. Musically, the sound emanating from Jamaica, popularised by Britain’s West…

You Don’t Mess With The Zohan

14 Aug 2008

COMEDY (12A) 112min Anyone who tries to understand Middle Eastern politics based on the contents of an Adam Sandler comedy deserves all they get. Despite his good intentions he bites off more than he can possibly chew in this, his new comic opus. For…

Frank Miller & Jim Lee - All Star Batman and Robin

14 Aug 2008

COMIC (DC/Titan) Frank Miller and Jim Lee tackle the world’s greatest detective and the boy wonder in this sister title to Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly’s All Star Superman. The first nine issues of the ongoing series are collected here, and like…

Rodge Glass

Analysing icons of football and fiction

14 Aug 2008

‘Faith is something that preoccupies me, definitely, but it is usually the lack of it,’ says Rodge Glass, the Glasgow-based Jewish author of No Fireworks and Hope for Newborns who passed through a staggering range of variously religious, private and…