Critics’ choice: Highlander | Slick | Calexico

Published on 14/02/2013 00:00

What to see this week

THEATRE

SLICK

TRAVERSE, EDINBURGH, UNTIL 16 FEBRUARY, AND ON TOUR TO ABERDEEN, KIRKCALDY, PAISLEY, DUNDEE, INVERNESS, PEEBLES AND GLASGOW

IN THE bathroom of the flat Wee Malky shares with his unsatisfactory parents, something is stirring; it’s a gusher of crude oil, emerging from the toilet, and it’s about to change Malky’s life. Vox Motus’s Slick – a Fringe First award winner in 2008 – is perhaps the finest, fastest, most hilarious piece of puppet theatre ever made in Scotland, perching human actors’ faces on tiny, grotesque bodies; and now, it sets off on a much-anticipated tour of Scotland, starting this week in Edinburgh.

• Tel: [phone]

JOYCE MCMILLAN

FILM

HIGHLANDER

CINEWORLD, GLASGOW, TOMORROW

Though Highlander’s 25th anniversary went largely unmarked two years ago, Kapow! – the comic book and fantasy strand of the Glasgow Film Festival – has decided to belatedly pay tribute to the cheesy, deranged brilliance of Scotland’s most enduring cult blockbuster. Since rules dictate that there can be only one screening – sorry – don’t miss out on this rare opportunity to revel in Sean Connery performance as a Spanish swordsman, mock Christopher Lambert’s French-accented Scot and marvel at the film’s bizarre Queen-soundtracked tale of rival immortals fighting to survive.

• Tel: [phone]

ALISTAIR HARKNESS

VISUAL ART

NICK EVANS: SOLAR EYES

TRAMWAY, GLASGOW, UNTIL 31 MARCH

Nick Evans’s striking sculptures and installations make a dramatic display at Tramway. According to the press release his imagery derives from “the Western fascination with notions of the exotic and ‘other’” and the striking backdrops he uses “incorporate aspects of Mayan, Egyptian and prehistoric symbolism”. Their bold designs certainly improve the drab interior of Tramway. Altogether it looks an unusually lively and visual show for a gallery that is not often associated with such frivolities.

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DUNCAN MACMILLAN

CLASSICAL

SCOTTISH OPERA: MASSENET’S WERTHER

THEATRE ROYAL, GLASGOW, TOMORROW AND 17, 20 AND 23 FEBRUARY

American tenor Jonathan Boyd sings the title role in Scottish Opera’s brand new production of Massenet’s Werther. The opera is based on Goethe’s partly autobiographical tale of a young artist infatuated by a girl whose engagement to another man leads him to take his own life, from which flows one of the French composer’s most emotionally gripping scores. British director Pia Furtado approaches it from the perspective of the hero looking back at the events leading up to his tragic death. Francesco Corti conducts.

• Tel: [phone]

KEN WALTON

POP

CALEXICO

ABC, GLASGOW, TOMORROW

Frontmen Joey Burns and John Convertino have been at the helm of this masterful Tucson ensemble since the mid-1990s. Unsurprisingly for a band named after a Californian/Mexican border town, the masterful Calexico blend Tex Mex and other Hispanic flavours into their alt-country sound to create what has been dubbed “desert noir” – although the name of their latest album, Algiers, refers to the town in New Orleans where they recorded rather than the Algerian capital on the edge of the Sahara.

• Tel: [phone]

FIONA SHEPHERD