Alex Johnston
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A History of Classical Music: Part 4 - The Later Renaissance
8 May 2013
Alex Johnston's series of articles outlining the history of classical music - with Spotify playlist
Welcome back. We left off in the mid-16th century, and for quite a while yet, the vast bulk of music that gets written down is church music. And you know what that means, right? ... More unaccompanied choral singing? Yes! And lucky you, because…
Richard Thompson - Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Thu 28 Feb 2013
7 Mar 2013
Inventive power trio show from unique and resourceful guitarist and songwriter
Richard Thompson and Eric Clapton. Two bearded Englishmen of a certain age, born within 30 miles and four years of each other, along what would one day become the south-western course of the M25, each of them devoted in their respective ways to certain…
A History of Classical Music: Part 3 - The Early Renaissance
29 Jan 2013
Alex Johnston's series of articles outlining the history of classical music - with Spotify playlist
The Renaissance. Right. Remind me again? The European Renaissance! The remarkable flowering of humanist culture that happened between the 14th and 16th centuries! Oil paintings that look like the real thing! Great writing that's not in Latin!
A History of Classical Music: Part 2 - Really Early Music
3 Dec 2012
Alex Johnston's series of articles outlining the history of classical music - with Spotify playlist
People have been making music as long as there's been people. The earliest musical instruments we have appear to be bone flutes, around 40,000 years old, found in Germany and Slovenia. The earliest composer whose name we know was from Ur, in what's now…
A History of Classical Music: Part 1 - Introduction
3 Dec 2012
Alex Johnston's series of articles outlining the history of classical music - with Spotify playlist
Do you like the odd piece of classical music, but you also feel like you can't tell one composer from another, and you don't know who wrote your favourite bits, and you're finding it all it a bit intimidating, but you'd like to know more? We can…
Bob Mould - Silver Age
15 Oct 2012
An album shot through with themes of endurance by the Husker Du and Sugar man
As one of America's best songwriters – first with Hüsker Dü, then in various other contexts (on solo albums such as Workbook and Black Sheets of Rain for example, and in power-trio Sugar) – Bob Mould has little left to prove, although he still sounds…
Andy Arnold to resurrect Dermot Bolger's 1994 adaptation of Ulysses
7 Sep 2012
The Irish playwright's vision for James Joyce's seminal text finally able to hit the stage
When you think of the big ol' modernist masterpieces, James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses has probably inspired more hype, more academic criticism and more dispraise than any other, and yet it was inspired by a minor drunken tiff. One night in 1904 Dublin…
Gulliver's Travels
19 Aug 2012
Savage and funny adaptation of Swift’s satire
The Victorians considered Gulliver's Travels a kid's book, chortling at the notion of a big man in a tiny world and quietly omitting Gulliver's horrified realisation that the bestial Yahoos are in fact human. That uncomfortable final part of the book is…
Watt
12 Aug 2012
Gate Theatre's Beckett adaptation largely fails to illuminate
At the start of the Gate Theatre's stage presentation of Samuel Beckett's novel Watt, Barry McGovern, the sole performer, lopes onstage dressed in hat and coat and carrying bulging suitcases. He hangs the hat and coat on a man-sized stand, placing the…
Anne Boleyn from playwright Howard Brenton examines Tudor dynasty
17 Apr 2012
Play promises unexpected take on history
TS Eliot may have been weirder than an ultraviolet raccoon, but he had some good lines. One of them was that civil wars never really end. It might explain our enduring fascination with the Tudors: Henry VIII’s decision to divorce his first wife and…
Tim Price discusses his new play, For Once
14 Mar 2012
The Pentabus production examines the impact of a car crash on the sole survivor
Shropshire’s Pentabus Theatre has earned a shelfload of awards for its imaginative and challenging productions of stories set in rural areas. Television writer Tim Price’s debut play, For Once, is a case in point. Set in Wales, it’s about the impact of…
Betrayal is one of Harold Pinter's subtlest and most honest plays
27 Feb 2012
Dominic Hill directs work examining an affair
There were many Harold Pinters: the gruff scourge of political hypocrisy; the resourceful screenwriter; the mesmerising actor, heroically playing Beckett when terminally ill; the not terribly good poet. Pinter the playwright, however, looms over them…
Paul McCartney - Kisses on the Bottom
3 Feb 2012
Macca covers 1920s and 1930s standards, with vanilla results
Paul McCartney has the weirdest back catalogue of any Beatle. This is an album of the 20s and 30s standards his dad used to play and it's less weird than perplexing, thanks to the unfortunate choice of Tommy 'Mainstream' LiPuma as producer. After his…
Melmoth The Wanderer
1 Feb 2012
Stage adaptation of Charles Maturin’s 1820 epic, sardonic shaggy dog
The Northern Irish company Big Telly Productions has a taste for adapting unruly texts such as Spike Milligan’s manic novel Puckoon. Their latest production is an adaptation by Nicola McCartney of Charles Maturin’s 1820 novel Melmoth the Wanderer. An…
The Hot 100 2011: 100-50
16 Dec 2011
The definitive list of Scottish creative talent
100: Gordon Ferris. Kilmarnock crime author makes good. The already packed Scottish crime writing field has finally found a bit of elbow room for another burgeoning talent. Joining the likes of Rankin, Brookmyre, McDermid and co is this Ayrshire-born…
Hot 100 2011 - No. 49 to 1
16 Dec 2011
The definitive list of Scottish creative talent
The Hot 100 is the definitive list of Scottish creative talent. From fashion designers to performance artists, everyone who has made a sizeable splash in 2011 has a place in this countdown. It’s for people who’ve created a buzz, but it’s also about…
Beauty and the Beast
6 Dec 2011
Stuart Paterson's 'children's play' is enjoyable but lacks the energy of true panto
The basic story is so simple it’s mythic: girl meets beast, they fall in love, beast turns into boy. Stuart Paterson’s venerable adaptation is a tad more complicated. There are ugly sisters (as if a titular ugly character weren’t enough), played with…
Pass the Spoon
21 Nov 2011
Shrigley's food-based opera aims for pure entertainment and succeeds
The most David Shrigley has claimed of Pass the Spoon is that it's meant to be entertaining. It’s mock-modesty, but in Shrigley & Co's defence, they've succeeded. The plot, for there is one, is like a mash-up of Ready Steady Cook and Terry & June…
Dr Marigold & Mr Chops
2 Nov 2011
Great but high-cholesterol fun starring Simon Callow
There's an old Yiddish showtune called ‘What can you mach? S'is Amerika’ (‘What can you do? It's America’), which comes to mind during this entertaining but frustrating show. It's not Simon Callow's fault. Performing two monologues by Charles Dickens…
Constantinople
23 Aug 2011
Completely ridiculous and unexpectedly educational
Theatre Beating’s lunatic dramatisation of the rise and fall of Constantinople is like a great pop song; it thrives on the tension between being completely brilliant and also very, very stupid. The jokes are consistently from the daft end of the street…
Phantasmagoria
23 Aug 2011
Depressing, lazy and naïvely acted
This glum story about friendship betrayed aims for something moving and grown-up, but isn’t helped by performances that vary from winsome to teeth-grindingly awful (it takes more than pouting, stomping and shouting to represent a child). The lazily…
Cutting the Cord
11 Aug 2011
Tragicomedy exploring immigration via young Japanese woman in London
Audience members queueing to enter Cutting the Cord are invited to tell a small wooden box where they’re coming from and where they’re going to. What seems like gratuitous cuteness pays off at the end of this engaging and skilful exploration of the…
