Tim Cornwell's diary: Morningsiders decline to go bare for Hair …

Published on Thursday 19 February 2009 19:45

THE King's Theatre in Edinburgh is showing Al Jolson without blackface. Now the Church Hill Theatre, just up the road in Morningside, is hosting Hair with clothes on.

The amateur Edinburgh Music Theatre (EMT) is reprising the cult show next week, more than 40 years after it debuted at London's Shaftesbury Theatre. The production touts the innovation of an all-female Hair "tribe" of characters, with the blessing of Annabel Leventon, who played Sheila in the original production.

"It makes it even more interesting and I hope cast and audience have the wonderful time we did in 1968," she says.

Hair, an EMT release notes, "became notorious for its nudity and the positive representation of hippie culture with drug-taking and sexual freedom." Promisingly, it adds the performance "is not deemed suitable for children."

Am dram in the buff? Sadly no. "This has always been an optional element of the show," says a spokeswoman. "No one in EMT's production has been made to feel that they have to bare all." Daren't even ask if they'll be taking drugs…

No dirt to dish

MIKE Russell's arrival as Culture Minister has brought frenzied shufflings as us hacks set about combing through his frequent pronouncements as author, newspaper columnist and opposition culture spokesman in the hope of unearthing some injudicious remark.

One grizzled gentleman of the press seized doggedly this week on similarities between the inaugural speech Russell fired off to arts leaders at the Traverse Theatre, and Grasping the Thistle, a "polemic" he co-wrote in 2006.

He also once backed the Cultural Commission's recommendation that 1 per cent of Scotland's GDP should be spent on culture.

Meanwhile, mutterings that Russell had once savaged an exhibition at Dundee Contemporary Arts featuring several rising stars of Scottish contemporary art brought frantic ferreting through The Scotsman's archives. The piece in question could not be traced. In 2002, however, Russell did host the launch at the Scottish Parliament of the Traditional Art Association. The new organisation boldly promised to "lead the backlash" against conceptual art and recruit 2-3 million members to the cause. Russell hailed it a "battle of ideas".

A Google search for this vaunted association draws a blank.

In a press conference, the minister cheerfully suggested we'd all written things that we regretted – an outrageous idea – that he'd been around a long time, and that "it might have been an off day".

"There were an awful lot of words," he said. "What I was criticising was those who thought there was only one way to present things. I've also written in the past about some conceptual art that has excited me."

Now, he says, he has shifted to a "broad church view" of art.

Beyond the Fringe

A REMINDER the Fringe still has clout, box-office shenanigans aside. My Grandfather's Great War, starring Cameron Stewart, is on a UK tour after opening at the Fringe in 2008.

The solo drama sees Stewart explore his family's history and the reality of trench warfare through the First World War diaries of his grandfather, Captain Alexander Stewart.

The tour includes one night at the Brunton Theatre in Musselburgh on 7 March. The diaries have been heard on Radio 4 and elsewhere, and Stewart got a nomination for best solo performance at The Stage awards in Edinburgh.

Elsewhere, the tortured clowns of Serendipity, another 2008 Fringe show, this one full of "grotesque buffoonery," begins a two week run at the Rosemary Branch Theatre in London next week.