Critics choice: Black Watch |

THEATRE

Black Watch

SECC, Glasgow, until 13 April

The most acclaimed Scottish theatre production of all time, greeted with rave reviews from Sydney to Toronto via South Korea returns to Scotland for two weeks only, before heading out again to Seattle and San Francisco. So if you can, move heaven and earth to catch these performances of Gregory Burke and John Tiffany’s magnificent, moving, urgent 2006 masterpiece of 21st century theatre, which follows a group of Scottish soldiers during their deployment to Camp Dogwood, Iraq, in 2004. Superb music by Davey Anderson, breathtaking choreography by Steven Hoggett, and a true politics emerging from the raw, uncomfortable stuff of human experience; it’s the show that made the National Theatre of Scotland, and everyone in Scotland should see it.

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JOYCE MCMILLAN

Film

What Is This Film Called Love?

Tonight, Filmhouse, Edinburgh

Mark Cousins follows up his magnificent Story of Film with this enjoyable curio in which he wanders around Mexico City with a photograph of Sergei Eisenstein for company, riffing about the city, filmmaking and his own identity. The navel-gazing results are surprisingly absorbing too and even if Cousins bearing his soul (and sometimes a bit too much else) is occasionally uncomfortable, it works as a sort of poetic, impressionistic video diary, with the third-person narration (courtesy of artist Alison Watt) adding an extra dimension as it builds to a strange old ending that tips its hat to the work of Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Cousins will be on hand to introduce the screening and participate in a post-film Q&A session.

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ALISTAIR HARKNESS

Visual Art

Andrew Kinghorn: Monumental Ego

Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Until 29 March

Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop doesn’t have a dedicated exhibition space, but sculptor Andrew Kinghorn has taken a couple of rooms to show his remarkable metaphoric self-portrait in monumental steel and bronze under what I am sure is an ironic title, Monumental Ego. The show is only on until tomorrow, but is worth a visit and is a chance too to see the remarkable development of the workshop itself.

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DUNCAN MACMILLAN

Classical

Handel’s Messiah

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, 30 March

The RSNO presents Handel’s Messiah this weekend under the baton of Glasgow-born Baroque specialist Paul Agnew. Agnew is best known as a tenor, associated with such specialist ensembles as The Tallis Scholars and William Christie’s Les Arts Florissants, but is now increasingly active as conductor and director. This is his RSNO conducting debut, appearing with the RSNO Chorus and a quartet of soloists, Katherine Watson, Christopher Lowery, Anthony Gregory and Derek Welton.

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KEN WALTON

Pop

Umberto

Kinning Park Complex, Glasgow, 30 March

If Matt Hill’s music was a film score, it would probably soundtrack a 1970s slasher flick. But that’s the point of his Umberto alias anyway. Hill’s synthscapes, as heard on his Rock Action album The Night Has A Thousand Screams and its follow-up Confrontations, deliberately evoke the world of John Carpenter’s classic horror films and the gothic electro prog of Italian horror soundtrack maestros Goblin. Prepare to be unsettled.

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FIONA SHEPHERD