Critics’ choice: What to watch

A roundup of the best art and entertainment on offer for this week

THEATRE

A TASTE OF HONEY

ROYAL LYCEUM, EDINBURGH, TOMORROW UNTIL 9 FEBRUARY

WHEN Shelagh Delaney died last winter, she was still barely 73; yet the tributes to her all focused on the night more than half a century ago when her play A Taste Of Honey, written when she was only 18, became one of the most sensational shows ever to appear on a British stage. Now, the Royal Lyceum revives this iconic working-class drama about teenage Salford kid Jo, unloved by her mother, pregnant by a long-gone black boyfriend, and befriended by her gay chum Geoffrey; intense stuff, even now, with lovely Rebecca Ryan, best known as young Debbie in Channel 4’s Shameless, in the leading role.

• Tel: [phone]

JOYCE MCMILLAN

FILM

TERMINATOR 2

CAMEO CINEMA, EDINBURGH, 19 JANUARY

Just before James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger went off the boil they made this deliriously entertaining sequel to The Terminator. Sure, it may have undermined the purity of the original’s time travel paradox, but in all other respects it was a game-changing blockbuster with revolutionary effects that still hold up almost 20 years on.

• Tel: [phone]

ALISTAIR HARKNESS

VISUAL ART

VIKINGS!

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF SCOTLAND, EDINBURGH, TOMORROW UNTIL 12 MAY

The Vikings we are often told were not really hairy pirates in horned helmets, but nice quiet traders and artists. Nevertheless the National Museum of Scotland has an exclamation mark in the title of their blockbuster Vikings! exhibition. It can only be there as an echo of the alarms that were sounded when some poor monk spotted a fleet of long ships approaching his monastery. The exhibition includes 500 objects from the home of the Vikings in Sweden and the press release suggests they will “show the Vikings in a new and intriguing light”.

• Tel: [phone]

DUNCAN MACMILLAN

CLASSICAL

SCOTTISH OPERA HIGHLIGHTS

REGAL COMMUNITY CENTRE, BATHGATE, TONIGHT; EASTGATE THEATRE, PEEBLES, 19 JANUARY; HEART OF HAWICK - TOWER MILL, 22 JANUARY; THEN ON TOUR

Time for another Scottish Opera splinter group to take opera to the corners of Scotland it doesn’t often reach. For the next five weeks, four singers and a pianist will present a travelling show of operatic highlights inspired by the company’s 50-year history. The soloists include the effervescent Nicky Spence, Scottish Opera Emerging Artist Katie Grosset, prize-winning soprano Eleanor Dennis and baritones Duncan Rock and Gary Griffiths. Claire Haslin and Ruth Wilkinson share the honours at the piano.

• Tel: [phone] (Bathgate); 01721 725 777 (Peebles); 01450 360688 (Hawick)

KEN WALTON

POP

AN EVENING WITH COWBOY JUNKIES

KELVINGROVE ART GALLERY AND MUSEUM, GLASGOW, 23 JANUARY

The opportunity to spend an evening with these Canadian alt.country veterans doesn’t come around too often, and especially not in such an august space as the Kelvingrove Art Gallery, which is being used by Celtic Connections for the first time this year. Margo Timmins, her brothers Michael and Peter and drummer Alan Anton first came to prominence with their second album The Trinity Session, while their latest output has been the elegant Nomad Series of four albums. With support from Mississippi-born, Bay Area-based singer/songwriter John Murry, who released his cathartic and highly acclaimed solo debut, The Graceless Age, last year.

• Tel: [phone]

FIONA SHEPHERD