Issue 670

New Lyceum production of The Importance of Being Earnest

Production follows on from Romeo and Juliet

The Importance of Being Earnest arrives hot on the heels of the Lyceum’s recent production of Romeo and Juliet, and is employing virtually the same cast and the same set. Director Mark Thomson is excited at the prospect of getting his teeth into Wilde’s…

Mandy, DJ Sneak and Cosmo Vitelli among highlights of The Wee Chill

Glasgow electronic festival takes place in Queens Park Glasshouse

Occupation Boutique clubbing mini-festival taking over the Glasshouse at Queens Park in Glasgow. Bit late for a festival isn’t it? Admittedly it has been moved back from their original September date but it’s all indoors so who cares about the…

Youthful, multicultural urban drama Playback a success despite contrivance

Narrative remains immersive despite gang culture themes being overplayed

This youthful, multicultural urban drama by Davey Anderson and Ankur Productions – the culmination of the PANGAA urban arts project – proves an impressive advertisement for the sort of large-scale play a bold and ambitious company can stage in the…

Nic Green’s Trilogy and David Leddy’s Sussurus among highlights of IETM

Umbrella group assembles Glasgow theatre festival bill

At a time when the threat of cutbacks hangs over Scottish theatre, it might be wise to take a good look at this theatre arts conference, for much of the work being showcased will not – if the auguries are true – be seen again on this scale for some…

Lung Ha’s Chekhov Shorts set for Traverse

Romance with a Double Bass and The Two Volodyas

While Lung Ha’s has long been known for producing groundbreaking work, the success of Huxley’s Lab, its CATS-winning co-production with Grid Iron earlier this year, may well have marked a watershed for the company, which works solely with actors with…

Plump DJs set for Bass Syndicate Edinburgh date

London’s breakbeat at home on own label Grand Hotel

The advent of dubstep has confined many formerly fashionable styles to the bargain bin which might be described as ‘old-school’ over the last decade or so, but a lot of the purveyors of those classic sounds are changing up to meet the needs of a new…

Paul Auster - Sunset Park

(Faber) It’s nearly 25 years since New Jersey boy Paul Auster wormed his way into the literary psyche with the unnervingly brilliant New York Trilogy. The existential mysteries and metaphysical puzzles he set up and explored seemed fresh and…

All-male dance show Ignite unites companies YDance and Smallpetitklein

Young show breaks down barriers surrounding boys and dance

Despite some of the most famous dancers in history being male, the dance world still struggles with the misconception that it’s ‘for girls’. The rise of hip hop has done much to address this, but for other dance styles, reaching out to boys and young…

5 things you might not know about Armstrong and Miller

We divulge their encounters with Countdown, physics and toffs

1: Ben Miller did a PhD in physics including a thesis entitled ‘Novel Quantum Effects in Quasi-Zero Dimensional Mesoscopic Electron Systems’. Alexander Armstrong has an English degree. Growing up outside Crewe, Miller’s parents were state-sector…

Performances and pace let down Jeremy Raison’s production of A Clockwork Orange

Largely unnecessary adaptation despite creating distinctive vision

Jeremy Raison’s production of Anthony Burgess’s satirical fable about youthful gang violence and freedom of choice was always going to have to work hard to distance itself from the iconic source novel, not to mention Stanley Kubrick’s notorious film…

Geoff Johns & Ivan Reis - Blackest Night

(DC/Titan) The first Green Lantern (aka Alan Scott) was created by Bill Finger and Martin Nodell in 1940. But it was the introduction of Hal Jordan in 1952 that was the birth of the Green Lantern Corps, an intergalactic police force who wield a power…

Paul Magrs - The Bride that Time Forgot

(Headline Review) The Bride that Time Forgot is a curious book. It’s part tale of a cosy little town, part time travel (via pinking shears and a watercolour), part vampire hunt, part spoof, and part touching tale of undying friendship among the…

Ossian Brown - Haunted Air

Former member of Coil has intense fascination with spooky Americana

(Jonathan Cape) Former member of Coil, Ossian Brown, clearly has an intense fascination with spooky Americana, having collected up these images of anonymous people posing for snaps around Hallowe’en between 1875 and 1955. The sepia tone adds an…

Yunte Huang - Charlie Chan

(WW Norton) Chinese-American academic Yunte Huang’s biography of the popular Oriental sleuth, star of six bestselling novels published from the mid-1920s on and upwards of 50 Hollywood films that followed, proves to be a pretty solid piece of…

Ed Byrne plays warm-up gigs throughout Scotland prior to spring tour

Observational Irish wit takes his spark and vitriol around Scotland

Ahead of a bumper spring tour, Mr Ed jaunts our way for some warm-up gigs down the old Stand. For those of a younger disposition, the boy Byrne used to have really long hair and was (probably still is) a huge Queen fan who got nominated by the Perrier…

Brooklyn's Yeasayer line up UK tour dates

Psych-pop-experimentalists hit road in support of Madder Red single and bonkers video

The Brooklynite psych-pop-experimentalists probably weren’t thinking about the rebranding of Edinburgh’s Lothian Buses when they named their latest single ‘Madder Red’ (LRT proudly announced ‘madder red’ as the shade of their newly revamped livery), but…

Small Black - New Chain

(Jagjaguwar) The music that began as a bedroom project. The summery, distorted anthems. The 80s-nodding beats – it’s not as if the world needs another dreamy, foggy dose of lo-fi synths from America. But that doesn’t mean we don’t want it. A…

Death Weekend set for Roxy Art House

Edinburgh venue marks Hallowe'en with themed weekend

The Roxy Art House get right into the spooky swing of things with this subtly-named collection of morbid events celebrating Hallowe’en. There’s a literary reading from satirical sci-fi guy Steve Aylett; experimental art from Alex Hetherington; live…

The Creole Choir Of Cuba - Tande-La

(Real World) What an inspiring story: only weeks after the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti, The Creole Choir of Cuba were working with the Cuban medical mission singing the same exuberant songs to survivors living in makeshift tents that they…

Robbie Williams rejoins Take That for 2011 tour

Original line-up set for dates in Manchester, Cardiff, Dublin, Glasgow, Birmingham and London

Take That have announced that they are to embark on a European tour in 2011, and that formerly estranged member Robbie Williams will be rejoining the band for these live dates.

Scottish Opera: The Marriage of Figaro

Sir Thomas Allen moves from performing to directing

Poacher turned gamekeeper isn’t overly common in the world of opera, but one internationally famous singer who has successfully moved from performing to directing is Sir Thomas Allen. Bringing the same team who produced a hugely enjoyable Barber of…

Various Artists - Fuck Dance, Let’s Art

(K7) For all of its swearing and sloganeering, Fuck Dance Let’s Art: Sounds from a New American Underground comes on less like a counter-cultural snapshot and more like a cash-in on the hipster genres variously tagged as chill-wave, dream-pop…

Foals and Toro Y Moi set for UK tour

Five reasons to go see nu-prog double header

For their lies, for their sweet little lies Foals (pictured) are not baby horses, we can tell you that. And Toro Y Moi is not a bull. The former is a Mercury-nominated art-rock quintet from Oxford. The latter is one Chazwick Bundick: a hazy…

Labels of love: Too Many Fireworks

There’s a phoenix rising in our midst, and its designate is Too Many Fireworks. Formed around 2001 by Troika’s Neil Milton (aka Beneath Us, The Waves), it was inspired by Chemikal Underground and enlightened by Electric Honey. The Glasgow-based imprint…

Zombie Zombie - Plays John Carpenter

(Versatile) Commissioning Zombie Zombie to reimagine John Carpenter’s classic oeuvre of horror movie themes for a performance at the Glasgow Film Festival was an inspired idea. Even so, it’s hard to entirely justify the Parisian electro-kraut…