What's on today

Published on Tuesday 8 July 2008 20:41

The top 10 cultural events in Scotland today

1 MUSIC: THE BLUE NILE

With new live dates this week, and Paul Buchanan working on a show for the National Theatre of Scotland in August, the Blue Nile are in danger of looking almost prolific. What's come over them? These ultra-rare live shows are officially Blue Nile gigs rather than Paul Buchanan ones. Don't get your hopes up for new songs though. It'll be at least five or six more years until the next album, surely.

&#149 Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, 7:30pm, 0141-353 8000

2 THEATRE: FUNGUS THE BOGEYMAN

The more adults try to clean children up, the more they seem to develop a subversive taste for the yucky, the messy and the downright revolting. Which is why Raymond Briggs's 1977 story book Fungus the Bogeyman remains hugely popular. This is a revival of the musical stage version by Marcus Romer of York's Pilot Theatre. Come and meet Fungus, Mould, and Maxine, a girl tired of her mother's obsession with cleaning.

&#149 Byre Theatre, St Andrews, 2:30pm and 7pm, 01334 475000

3 MUSIC: KYLIE MINOGUE

Kylie Minogue's new show lasts more than two hours, during which she performs 28 numbers with just enough time to change her corset between lavishly conceived set-pieces, from an American football routine to a Malibu-flavoured disco stomp.

&#149 SECC, Glasgow, 7pm, 0870 040 4000

4 FILM: THE VISITOR

Although set in present-day New York and dealing directly with the post 9/11 illegal immigration crackdown, Thomas McCarthy's wondrous new film is no groan-worthy issue movie. Instead it's an intensely moving story about a friendship between two illegal immigrants and an economics professor who tries to help them.

&#149 Cinemas nationwide.

5 MUSIC: JED GRIMES

The veteran English singer-songwriter and guitarist, formerly of the folk-rock band Hedgehog Pie, plays a show north of the Border, including songs from his solo CD, Head On, which consists of new interpretations of traditional songs from the north of England and elsewhere.

&#149 Dunfermline Folk Club, Dunfermline, 8pm, 01383 729673

6 THEATRE: OUR HOUSE

The distinctive ska-pop sound of Madness is spun out into a musical that gives full expression to the values behind the group's songs, a mixture of streetwise cynicism and underlying romanticism. The result is gem of a show, with bold echoes of Willy Russell's iconic working class musical Blood Brothers.

&#149 Playhouse, Edinburgh, 7:30pm, 0870 606 3424

7 MUSIC: HAR MAR SUPERSTAR

Short, balding, rotund, and hairy in all the wrong places, Har Mar Superstar is a preposterous sex symbol, but that's the point of the joke. The fact that he's still playing venues as small as King Tut's suggests the joke is not as funny as it could be, but Har Mar's funked up, Prince-lite love god act is very likeable.

&#149 King Tut's, Glasgow, 8:30pm, 0870 169 0100

8 THEATRE: THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

Glasgow's annual Bard in the Botanics season kicks off with a version of Shakespeare's play set in 1930s Europe, a time when, its director Gordon Barr says, good and evil came sharply into focus. Audiences are advised to bring waterproofs, and coffee.

&#149 Botanic Gardens, Glasgow, 7:45pm, 0141-330 5522

9 MUSIC: ALPHABEAT

A Scissor Sisters in the making? This Dayglo Denmark band sound like they've sprung, fully formed, from a 1980s pop time capsule. Unashamedly cheesy – they write songs with titles like Fascination and actually sing "woh oh oh" – they're a hoot. There's another chance to see them at T in the Park on Friday.

&#149 Oran Mor, Glasgow, 7:30pm, 0141-357 6200

10 THEATRE: ARCADIA

Playing in repertoire throughout Pitlochry summer season, this is the Scottish premiere of Tom Stoppard's Olivier Award-winning detective story, set on a dramatic weekend at a stately home in 1809, and a century later, as an academic investigates what happened.

&#149 Pitlochry Festival Theatre, 2pm, 01796 484626