Features
Preview: Oliver! the Musical
Cameron Mackintosh’s musical production of Oliver! – a perennial favourite in London’s West End – is coming to Scotland on a tour that requires meticulous planning, chaperones, frequent cast rotations – and enough food to feed an army of children. By Kelly Apter
Film review: Moonrise Kingdom (12A)
Here’s another film only Wes Anderson could make, with great, against-type performances by Bruce Willis and Edward Norton
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FIlm reviews: What to Expect When You’re Expecting | Free Men | North Sea Texas | The Source | Men in Black 3
The Scotsman’s film critics cast their eye over the latest cinematic releases
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Interview: Tahar Rahim, actor in A Prophet and Free Men
French-Algerian Tahar Rahim has the acting world at his feet, but, finds Alistair Harkness, he’s in no rush to work in America
Visual art review: Masterpieces from Mount Stuart: The Bute Collection
In bringing Dutch and Flemish art to Scotland, the 3rd Marquis of Bute was reflecting the exchange of art and ideas between Protestant nations that ushered in a new age of empiricism based on experience of the world around us
Alistair Harkness
DVD Reviews: Catch .44 | Chronicle
The Scotsman’s film critic, Alistair Harkness, casts his eye over the latest DVD releases
DVD reviews: The Descendants | Haywire
THE casting in The Descendants really shouldn’t work. It’s a film, after all, in which George Clooney plays a cuckolded husband who discovers his comatose wife was not only about to leave him for another man, but was about to leave him for another man played by a guy whose last significant role was as Shaggy in the live-action Scooby-Doo movies (Matthew Lillard).
Film reviews: The Raid | 2 Days in New York | Even the Rain | A Gang Story | Iron Sky
ALISTAIR HARKNESS on the rest of the week’s new releases...
Film review: The Dictator (15)
ITS jokes are somewhat hit and miss, but when it comes to sheer chutzpah, Sacha Baron Cohen’s new comedy still leads the way.
DVD reviews: The Divide | ID
The Scotsman’s film critic Alistair Harkness casts his eye over recent DVDs...
Fiona Shepherd
Album review: PiL; This is PiL
John Lydon sounds very relaxed on PiL’s first album in 20 years – as much as is possible while sounding like a deranged children’s entertainer
CD of the Week: Paul Buchanan - Mid Air
THE Proclaimers recently told The Scotsman that they have always been attracted to writing the same kind of song, one which embodies a poetic and melodic simplicity, because that way lies honesty and integrity.
Album review: Garbage; Not YOur Kind of People
For a band that’s supposedly about alienation and rawness, the return of Shirley Manson’s gang is as polished, accessible and overproduced as ever, writes Fiona Shepherd
Album review: Damon Albarn; Dr Dee
The world of Elizabethan court magician Dr John Dee is a long way from Blur, but Damon Albarn sounds very much at home on this spellbinding new project
Gig review: Lianne La Havas, Glasgow Oran Mor
Londoner Lianne La Havas has a stint as Paloma Faith’s backing singer on her CV, but her own solo career has taken off handsomely in the five years since she elected to learn guitar and write her own material in earnest, catching the ear of Gary Barlow, Bon Iver and Prince before she has even released an album.
Joyce McMillan
Theatre reviews: One Day in Spring | The Fashion Floor | 27
David Greig’s collaboration with Arab writers is creating exhilarating results at Oran Mor, while Abi Morgan’s 27 is back – shorter, leaner and magnificently performed
Joyce McMillan: His art was an expression of freedom
In his popular creations, Wyllie, who died this week, showed Scotland how to let go of its past, writes Joyce McMillan
Theatre review: Sleeping Beauty Insomnia | Mikey and Addie | Fight Night
While the One Day in Spring season offers another tale of youth betrayed, the Imaginate children’s festival concludes with a hopeful flourish.
Theatre review: Anne Boleyn, Edinburgh Festival Theatre
SOME political deaths send a shiver down the ages that reaches far beyond the small circle of historical scholarship.
Theatre reviews: Paperbelle | Titus | Traverse | Rumpelstiltskin
THEY say that we human beings are born alone, and that in the end, we die alone.
Duncan Macmillan
Visual art review: Callum Innes | Matthew Draper | Roland Fraser
A RETURN to the primacy of colour – once so expensive that it was part of what made a painting precious – is reaping some stunning results.
Art reviews: Tony Swain | A Parliament of Lines
Collage is an underappreciated art form, but it has a strong pedigree dating back to the Cubists and beyond, and we don’t need jargon to obfuscate the intentions of an artist who uses it. By Duncan Macmillan
Kenneth Walton
Preview: Scottish Opera’s 50th anniversary celebrations
Scottish Opera is talking up its 50th anniversary programme as a dynamic return to its roots, but there are compromises too
The Cottier Chamber Project pay tribute to Edinburgh Zoo’s pandas
IN TWO weeks’ time, Glasgow’s Bohemian quarter will be buzzing again as the annual West End Festival gets underway. And once more, one of the most ambitious components of the event is a continuous two-week festival of chamber music at Cottiers, the former Dowanhill Church which is now a thriving combination venue of pub and performance space.
Interview: Kit Armstrong, concert pianist, composer and mathematician
The nearest Kit Armstrong has ever come to visiting Scotland was the time he boarded the wrong train from Carlisle.
Classical review: RSNO, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
THE RSNO pulled out all the stops for the penultimate programme of Stéphane Denève’s tenure as musical director.
Interview: Stéphane Denève, musical director of RSNO
SEVEN years well spent at the helm of the RSNO comes to an end next week for Stéphane Denève, but why exactly is he going?
Jim Gilchrist
Folk, jazz etc.: ‘It’s about the way people go away smiling and uplifted’
REVERED Dixieland elders such as W C Handy or Jelly Roll Morton tend not to crop up in the same breath as those Skye folk-fusionists the Peatbog Faeries.
Folk, jazz, etc: Brother’s poignant tribute to tenor sax giant cuts to the very bone
MICHAEL Brecker was regarded by many as the most influential tenor saxophonist of the past quarter century, carving out a stellar reputation in his own right and collecting 13 Grammy awards along the way, in the eclectic company of players as diverse as Herbie Hancock and Aerosmith, Charles Mingus and Eric Clapton. There was also his formidable “heavy metal bebop” partnership with his older, trumpet-playing brother Randy.
Folk, Jazz etc.: McFall’s is going loopy with busy Four Corners schedule
NEVER a dull moment, it seems, when you play in Mr McFall’s Chamber, the wilfully eclectic ensemble, its core drawn from the ranks of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, who can be found performing everything from James MacMillan to Astor Piazzolla, King Crimson to Looney Tunes cartoon scores.
Marking a decade Distilling essences to create a powerful blend
AUDIENCES at the Tolbooth Arts Centre in Stirling tomorrow night will sample a particularly potent distillate – not a drop of the hard stuff, as such, but the latest products of Distil, an initiative established to enable traditional musicians to learn from and collaborate with practitioners from other genres.
Susan Mansfield
Theatre preview: The Last Polar Bear
CHILDREN’S show The Last Polar Bears has a hard-hitting message about climate change – and the cast are helping get it across by cycling for 300 miles to perform it.
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Visual art review: Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design
THE first of this year’s annual art school showcases is thoughtful but bursting with life, testament to the health of contemporary art on Tayside.
Arts Blog
Cannes film festival: What Pete Doherty and Ronan Keating have in common
You wouldn’t normally expect to see Ronan Keating and Pete Doherty mentioned in the same sentence. But then it isn’t every day that the Boyzone star and former Libertine come to Cannes to talk up their film acting debuts.
Why I can’t stay away from Eurovision
THERE’S usually an awkward pause, followed by the word “really?” (whilst trying to stifle a giggle) when I explain to folk that I’m about to set off to spend the next fortnight amidst diva-esque singers, nymph-like dancers, camp choreographers, overtly fey stylists and a plethora of “hugely important” delegates at the Eurovision Song Contest.
The Smarts: Coming to the Fringe this year are... oh, you knew that already?
THE Edinburgh Fringe will launch its 2012 programme at the end of May. But will there be anything left to announce by then?
The arts diary: new fringe shows revealed
LOVE Letters to the Public Transport System is one of 12 shows in the Edinburgh Fringe’s Made in Scotland line-up, unveiled yesterday at Creative Scotland’s HQ on Waverley Gate and is presented by the National Theatre of Scotland.
What might an album by Shirley Manson and Paul Buchanan have sounded like?
THE new albums by Garbage and Paul Buchanan seem like musical polar opposites - one is sleek, hard-edged guitar pop that seems tailor-designed for daytime radio. The other, as you’d expect from the former frontman of the Blue Nile, is music for listening to late at night - slow, sparse, full of quiet ache and longing.
- Scottish independence: I don’t want ‘separatism’ says Sir Tom Farmer
- Scottish independence: Labour voters ‘will deliver independence’
- Craig Levein insists Scotland will recover from US thrashing
- Rangers administration: End game nears for fallen icon
- Tom English: ‘A mammoth investigation, so vast that it is without parallel in the history of the Scottish game’
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Monday 28 May 2012
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