Theatre - Trilogy: Part Three

THE 2008 Arches Live! Festival finished, as it began, over the weekend, with a fierce cry of protest against patriarchy from a supposedly "postfeminist" generation. Nic Green's Trilogy: Part Three is part of a much wider web-based Make Your Own Herstory project, designed to encourage women to tell their own stories. On a bare stage, Green and her beautiful co-performer, Laura Bradshaw, alternate between half-ironic clipboard presentations, and exquisite, sharp-edged unison dance sequences. There's a fabulous moment when Bradshaw telephones her mother in Manchester, and relays the story of her mother's recent rediscovery of her younger, radical self; it's a telling metaphor for the buried history of feminism. And then Green and Bradshaw invite the women in the audience to strip off to their gloriously varied nakedness, and join in singing Blake's Jerusalem, the great English anthem of radical liberation; only seven women among us were brave enough, but it felt like a fine moment of freedom, all the same.

There are also interesting moments of radicalism in Iain Campbell and Greg Grant's Idolon, a 20-minute event staged in a dark room between two big screens, on which the audience can see shifting live images of themselves; meanwhile, musician/ composer Iain Campbell uses a heap of retro-looking electronic equipment to generate music and sound-distorts that seem reflected in the images on screen, reducing us to the most fragile, transient disturbances of light. And Gary McNair's Equal And Opposite is an extreme physical clown show for the age of quantum physics, featuring balloons, feathers, lettuces and strings stuffed up McNair's nose. If you're a connoisseur of physical comedy, you may well be thrilled. If, like me, you're bored by it, this will seem like the longest 45 minutes of your life; but not easily forgotten, all the same.

COMEDY

SCOTTISH COMEDIAN OF THE YEAR

OLD FRUITMARKET, GLASGOW

WHO'D be a judge at an event such as the Scottish Comedian of the Year? Last September, the beaks seemed to get their voting papers in a right old fankle when the top three was announced, inexplicably allowing some fine stand-ups to shuffle backstage in the also-rans corner. This year, they steered far away from controversy island by plumping for Scott Agnew, Teddy and Keir McAllister, a trio patently head, shoulders, knees and toes above the rest.

The only question was who would scoop the top prize of 1,000, gigs at the Glasgow International Comedy Festival and in Australia and the wonderfully crafted banana boots trophy? When a clearly crestfallen Keir McAllister took to the stage in receipt of his third prize, the yells of "winner" from a portion of the crowd may have helped him dry his eyes in the liquor-sodden aftermath.

The permanently rosy-cheeked Teddy appeared more accepting of his second-placed fate as the massive (as in tall and soon to be very famous) Scott Agnew made up for last year's disappointment with this proud victory.

With Teddy asking his audience to "toughen up" as he applied for the post of Official Comedian of the Taliban, Agnew discussing being a gay Catholic performing to a crowd of Orangemen while exposing the impracticality of threesomes, and McAllister launching an increasingly hysterical tirade against the proposed state funeral for Thatcher, there was very little to split three comics with mighty stage presence and impressively high punchline ratios. Special mention should also be made of the hottest newcomers among the ten: Rab Brown with the most surreal set, and Ian Stirling created a hilariously grotesque tableau of caravan life.

Host Janey Godley just about managed to staple proceedings together, no thanks to an awkward-squadder in the front row, while 2006 winner Mark Nelson provided a snapshot of the spectacularly gruesome wit that deservedly earned him that inaugural gong. Whether you approve of this bear-pit making and breaking of comedy dreams, no-one can deny the sense of excitement and occasion that this annual event now generates. And on the back of last year's litany of injustice, only the foolhardy would argue that the judges got themselves into another fine mess.