The List Issue 769

KT TUNSTALL ON HER HEARING LOSS

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I was completely disabled by vertigo

A little self-indulgence first, if that’s OK? This issue marks our one-year anniversary of returning to print publishing, something that often seemed quite out of reach even as we slowly planned a comeback. But here we are: we’ve survived a monumental 12-month period which has been, to say the least, a challenge for the Scottish arts community.

For every announcement about the first bricks being laid as a new major concert hall comes to Edinburgh, there’s word of further struggles at the capital’s King’s Theatre. And for each reversal by the government on their arts funding cuts, we seem to be no further forward on seeing the Filmhouse get back on its feet.

For our part, all we can do is keep telling readers about the amazing work being produced by artists in Scotland and further afield. Once again, homegrown talent dominates our pages this month, with one queen of comedy (Fern Brady) gracing our cover, and another (Janey Godley) receiving five stars for what is, sadly, likely to be her final touring show.

Jazz master Fergus McCreadie talks to us about his new tour and admits that awards are, you know, nice, but not the ultimate goal for any discerning musician. KT Tunstall tells us about exciting new directions in her own work while she deals with hearing loss. Jon S Baird, the director of Filth and Stan & Ollie, recalls how Aberdeen doubled for Moscow in his forthcoming TV film about Tetris. And Scottish Opera are tackling a Puccini triple-bill in what is likely to be a spectacular affair.

Glasgow is awash with festivals this month as the city’s Film Festival waves farewell to co-director Allan Hunter. He leaves behind an excellent final line-up including Léa Seydoux in One Fine Morning and Conor McCarron in Dog Days, while Winnie-The-Pooh puts his honey pot down to cause death and destruction in quite the career shift. There’s also another superb Comedy Festival in the offing, so we’ve hooked up with Eshaan Akbar and Ivo Graham as well as asking a number of festival acts to nominate the one show they’re dying to see themselves. Amid the gloom, thankfully there are still many people around to keep the laughter going.

Brian Donaldson EDITOR

CONTRIBUTORS

PUBLISHING

CEO Sheri Friers

Editor Brian Donaldson

Art Director Seonaid Rafferty

Sub Editors

Paul McLean

Megan Merino Designer Carys Tennant

Writers

Allan Hunter, Becca Inglis, Brian Donaldson, Carol Main, Claire Sawers, Claire Stuart, David Kirkwood, Donald Reid, Eddie Harrison, Eilidh Akilade, Emma Simmonds, Fiona Shepherd, Haneen AlEid, James Mottram, Jay Richardson, Jay Thundercliffe, Jo Laidlaw, Katherine McLaughlin, Kelly Apter, Kevin Fullerton, Lucy Ribchester, Marcas Mac an Tuairneir, Megan Merino, Murray Robertson, Neil Cooper, Paul Dale, Paul McLean, Rachel Ashenden, Sean Greenhorn, Stewart Smith

Social Media and Content Editor Megan Merino

Senior Business Development Manager

Jayne Atkinson

Online News Editor Kevin Fullerton

Media Sales Executive Ewan Wood

Digital Operations Executive Leah Bauer

DADA MASILO ELEANOR CATTON

PICTURE: TRISTRAM KENTON

PICTURE: MURDO MACLEOD

MOUTHPIECE

Allan Hunter gets set for a fond farewell to his role as co-director of Glasgow Film Festival. Here, he reflects on the joys of that job, from emotional closing galas to programming without prejudice

The first time I went to the Cannes Film Festival, I was encouraged to seek out a small, independent, black and white American film. It was called She’s Gotta Have It and was directed by a promising young fellow called Spike Lee. It became the talk of the town. The first time I went to the Sundance Film Festival, I queued in the bitter Utah cold for a late-night screening of a film that had already started to attract its share of buzz. The director was visible in a crowded foyer. A couple of the stars were present. In the chaos of that evening, I secured one of the last two seats for the first public screening of Reservoir Dogs

You get my point. Festivals are wonderful places of discovery. You can see a completely unknown film that becomes a new favourite by a talent who is going to blaze across the screen for decades to come. One of the great pleasures of being co-director of the Glasgow Film Festival is playing a tiny part in that process of discovery. There are films that you believe deserve to raise the roof when shown to a full cinema. We felt that last year with Jono McLeod’s My Old School. We felt it in 2018 with Felipe

Bustos Sierra’s documentary Nae Pasaran which gave us the most emotional closing night in the festival’s history. There are hundreds of new films out there and dozens of ways of watching them. That makes festivals more important than ever. Everything in the Glasgow Film Festival programme has been chosen and championed, carefully curated to cut through the often-bewildering range of choices out there. A festival screening is like a stamp of approval. Glasgow has always prided itself on programming without prejudice, showing the best of world cinema and the finest films made right around the corner. We’ve shown works by Lynne Ramsay and May Miles Thomas, John McPhail and Armando Iannucci. This festival is a vital part of the film scene in Scotland. As it looks towards celebrating its 20th edition in 2024, it will play an even bigger role in mentoring local talent, supporting the indigenous production industry, and becoming the greatest showcase for Scottish filmmaking. I leave my role as codirector this year but can’t wait to see what happens next.

 Allan Hunter is co-director of Glasgow Film Festival which runs from Wednesday 1–Sunday 12 March.

In this series of articles, we turn the focus back on ourselves by asking folk at The List about cultural artefacts that touch their heart and soul. This time around, Paul McLean tells us about those things which . . .

Made me cry: Rob Delaney’s memoir A Heart That Works, about the loss of his son Henry from a brain tumour, aged just two. Unbearably sad yet full of Delaney’s black humour, there’s grief, rage and unconditional love coursing through its pages.

Made me angry: Still pretty cut up about Danny Dyer’s watery exit from EastEnders Bloody Janine. Absolute monster.

Made me sad: The fact that Elspeth Barker’s darkly eccentric novel O Caledonia is the only one she ever wrote. And that I only got round to reading it this year despite it being published in 1991. It’s an amazing book.

Made me think: The ABBA Voyage show in London. I mean, I know they’re just ‘ABBA-tars’ but the whole thing is jaw-dropping. Unfathomable Scandi witchcraft.

Made me think twice: The Two Roberts exhibition a few years ago was a real eyeopener on the fickle nature of success. The Roberts (Colquhoun and MacBryde) were lovers from working-class Scottish roots, whose talent rightly made them darlings of the post-war British art scene, hanging out with the likes of Francis Bacon. Yet tragically, they somehow ended up penniless and pretty much forgotten.

playLIST

Delve into immersive cinema scores, Scottish jazz and new Depeche Mode in this month’s selection of featured tunes

KT Tunstall, LASTESIS, slowthai and Portishead are also among those making appearances

Scan and listen as you read:

head head2

MEGAN

If we call social-media apps what they really are (addictive digital substances), then BeReal should be the drug they use to wean you off the really hardcore stuff. This relatively new kid on the social-media block asks you to capture one image every 24 hours (through your phone’s camera) at a standardised time. That then creates a feed of often mundane but at least honest pictures of the same random moment in your online community’s day.

Of course, people can bend the rules and retake the picture with better lighting, or wait an hour until they go to that fancy dinner to have something more flashy to capture. But every retake and minute of tardiness is logged by the app so your phoney actions are shared with the world.

This is the antithesis of heavily curated grid posts and Facetuned stories designed to impress people you don’t care about. Instead, when used correctly it shows the sheer banality of life and, if my own archive of selfies is anything to go by, serves up a generous slice of humble pie. Spoiler alert: it turns out we all spend way more time in front of computer screens than on a beach in Bali.

pot shot

As a cracked mirror reflection of our back-page Hot Shots, this slot is all about the publicity pictures that have pinged into our inbox recently and made us go . . . sorry, what?

If you’re of a certain vintage and only just about recovered from the lifelong trauma of having witnessed The Who’s Sell Out album cover featuring Roger ‘Brexit Is Good! No Wait, It’s Negatively Impacting Upon Me So It Must Be Bad!’ Daltrey sitting in a bath of baked beans, prepare to be triggered. Less damp but arguably as greasy, comedian Lloyd Griffith is promoting his One Tonne Of Fun tour by appearing to be submerged in a ludicrously vast bag of chips. Fear not, folks, it’s just a cunning optical illusion (we think). Lloyd will be leaping out of the deep fat fryer and faceplanting straight into the fire of a Glasgow crowd with a 12 March date at Glee.

Once again, we sit Megan Merino and Kevin Fullerton down in front of a contentious bit of current culture and ask them to write about it straight from the heart. Here they take on social-media app BeReal, which aims to capture the reality of users’ everyday lives, not the staged humblebragging so prevalent on its rivals. Does it succeed?

KEVIN

Take in a long deep breath that bundles up your troubles. Now, slowly breathe out and release those worries, that tension, those fears for the future. You are finely ground sediment, moving without purpose. Breathe in and . . . TIME TO BE REAL. Such is the jarring experience of BeReal, a push notification vending machine which invades your thoughts like an infant screaming in your ears.

Documenting mundanity may be a reasonable antidote to the brag-’emup mentality fostered by Instagram and their ilk, but why bother? The better option is to tune out completely, not change to a less irritating station. It’s like relocating your home from a sewage pipe to a public toilet: new location, same flood of excrement.

Either way, our lives aren’t interesting enough to share with the world in any context, beyond a handful of friends and family (and they’re not interested either). So, delete BeReal and stop polluting the world with endless visual representations of your drudging routine. While you bathe in comfortable silence, meditate on how good life could be if corporate tech giants stopped trying to capitalise on your every waking moment.

Character study

Fern Brady has just added author to an already busy CV. The Bathgate stand-up speaks to Megan Merino about growing up Catholic and autistic, and the ‘near-death’ experience that emboldened her while writing that debut book

speaks

that turned Fern

She has been a familiar Scottish voice on our comedy stages and screens for almost a decade, but it was a recent appearance on Channel 4’s Taskmaster Brady into a bona fide household name. Her witty rewrite of Mozart’s ‘Turkish March’ (birthing the viral line ‘it is me Fern Brady, me Fern Brady’) where she effortlessly used the words ‘obsequious’, ‘sycophant’ and ‘serendipitous’ to diss her fellow contestants, could be seen as a hilarious foreshadowing of her latest creative endeavour: penning a memoir.

Female Character, looks

Brady’s first book, Strong back upon formative moments through the lens of her recent autism diagnosis. But fans of her stand-up or Wheel Of Misfortune podcast (which she co-hosted with Alison Spittle and wishes ‘could be taken down’ now that she’s entering her ‘Radio Four era’) know that this Bathgate girl has more jaw-dropping tales to share than your average comedian-cum-author could hope to harvest in a lifetime.

Alison Spittle and wishes ‘could be taken down’ now Bathgate girl has more jaw-dropping tales to share a unknowingly

‘There was a lot of chaos early on but thankfully the last decade has been very boring,’ she says from her London flat on a rare day off. The chaos she refers to includes being unknowingly groomed by a local shopkeeper, escaping a police officer and their husband after a threesome, being admitted to a dysfunctional mentalhealth unit, and stripping to pay her way through university. Rest assured, laugh-out-loud moments arise often, but an uncompromising darkness sits underneath each arresting chapter.

unit, was trying to make the thing that I up because I just couldn’t find

‘I didn’t write it to advance my comedy career,’ she attests. ‘So much of what’s in the book is really embarrassing. All the latediagnosed autistic-women books I read made me think “why have they all had really calm lives!?” So I was trying to make the thing that I wished existed when I was growing up because I just couldn’t find information anywhere. I know my version of it is more common than you might think.’

PICTURES: RAPHAEL NEAL

FERN BRADY

2022; working out a challenge in Channel 4’s Taskmaster; trolleying around Scotland’s national drink in Dave’s Comedians Giving Lectures

Fern on the box (from top): head judge at theBBC New Comedy Awards

After extracts of the book were published, Brady instantly received an influx of messages from readers. ‘There were people being like, “I’m autistic and I’ve never read anyone describe this before”. It’s not like I’m the first to mention being autistic in the public eye, it’s just I’ve been talking about meltdowns: the uncomfortable bit that no one wants to mention. A lot of autistic people who are speaking about it tend to come from the same middle-class backgrounds; probably because it takes a lot of money, time and resources to get diagnosed. I think that affects the kind of portrayals we see.’

As well as being soul-bearing and entertaining, Strong Female Character is heavily researched. Medical studies and journals are referenced to substantiate the often-political jabs Brady takes at the healthcare systems that failed her, as well as the inherent misogyny which intersected them (autistic women often present differently to men and are less likely to get diagnosed earlier in life). ‘I was always getting told that the way I was behaving was really wrong by people in my family, and at school, when really the way I was acting was autistic.’

Brady grapples with the process of reconciliation throughout the book, but ‘awkwardly’ had to get her parents to agree in writing not to sue her for the way they’re depicted. Their reaction, she says, was characteristically unenthusiastic: ‘did you know Paco Rabanne was a real person? Because he died today,’ was her dad’s response to the book getting a five-star review, while her mother was proud but ‘didn’t mention literally any detail about it. I don’t know if this is a Catholic thing but they gloss over everything. Literally someone could die in front of you and they would say they’re looking well today. That’s just how it is.’

not to sue her for the way they’re depicted. Their reaction, she

is growing up in Bathgate because I think it helped me overlook all

When she was kicked out of the family home, an offer for Edinburgh University was Brady’s one-way ticket out of the provincial life she so despised. ‘In a way, I’m glad that I was autistic growing up in Bathgate because I think it helped me overlook all the norms that were laid out for us. If I’d followed them, I don’t think I would have ended up leaving or finding stand-up.’

So You Think You’re Funny?

Autistic Bikini Queen Queen businesswoman

After entering the open-mic circuit in her final year, Brady came joint third in at the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe, and has gone on to present numerous solo hours and appear regularly on mainstream TV. She’s currently touring her latest stand-up show, ; but, despite the title, it doesn’t focus on her recent diagnosis. ‘Most of Autistic Bikini Queen is about marriage and death,’ she deadpans. ‘I’m a canny businesswoman so I know not everyone wants to hear about autism.’

In the show, she touches on a ‘near death’ experience that took place while writing the book. ‘My doctor sent me for an MRI scan and they found this growth, so he basically made out that I had a brain tumour. I thought “that’s it, I’m gonna die” . . . It was a pituitary cyst that does nothing. But I did have one night of thinking “if you could write the book as if you’re about to die, how would you write it?” It gave me a good rush of don’t-give-a-fuckness.’ Perhaps more of us ought to grapple with our own mortality if it births something as bold as . ‘Everyone should have the opportunity to feel it. But the doctor should also tell you the next day that they’re a shit-stirring

Fern Brady: Autistic Bikini Queen, King’s Theatre, Glasgow, Sunday 26 March, as part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival; Strong Female Character is out now published by

In the show, she touches on a ‘near death’ experience that took and they found this growth, so he basically made out that I had “that’s Strong Female Character should have opportunity to feel it. But the doctor should also bitch of a drama queen.’ Brazen.

PICTURE: ELLIS O’BRIEN

PICTURE:ANDY DERBYSHIRE

PICTURE: ROB PARFITT

Comic strip

In this extract from Strong Female Character, Brady recalls her days dancing in a ‘gentlemen’s club’

I first discovered the notion of autistic strippers when I was filling out my assessment forms back when I was first diagnosed and came across the work of writer and stripper Reece Piper. Reading about why stripping is appealing to some autistic women, I realized there was more than one of us. Thinking back over some of my old workmates, there were possibly even loads of us.

My pragmatic views made sense: of course I enjoyed a job that was highly tolerant of weirdos, almost impossible to get sacked from, had none of the fluorescent lighting that made most off ices or supermarket jobs overwhelming, involved the same routine night after night and the same dumb conversations with men with no tricky social cues to read. I feel like people who are outside of autism but autism-adjacent – parents, carers, therapists – would like to say that autistic women end up in sex work because we’re vulnerable and easily taken advantage of. That may well be true for some but to say it’s the only reason is to deny us our agency, to deny the fact that we found the one job that incidentally has all the reasonable adaptations lacking in most office environments and that we did what was best for ourselves in harsh circumstances. I’m never going to say it’s empowering; I put paid to that idea after I had to bicker with a girl over which of us got to dress as a sexy schoolgirl on costume night.

Liquorice Club felt like a grown-up strip club. Not always in a good way. The manager was an ex-stripper called Vicky and the assistant manager was a gay guy called John who would sometimes pole dance for us as a special treat – which was weird as he was chubby and greyskinned and dressed like a Jobcentre advisor.

My song in Liquorice was ‘Wide Open Space’ by Mansun but this lent itself to stupid amounts of innuendo by bitchface Vicky every time she announced me: ‘Good evening, guys. Next up on the pole showing you her wide open space, it’s the lovely . . . Ava!’

I’d be standing onstage while she said this, nodding and smiling and weakly playing along with her dumb fanny jokes. I changed my song to ‘Glory Box’ by Portishead, which really wasn’t much better in terms of innuendo as Vicky just started saying I was showing my glory box instead.

Innuendo has always annoyed me as a particularly English attempt at humour. It’s saying but not quite saying something rude. In a Scottish strip club with bald fannies being waved about like Saltire flags at a gala day it felt ludicrous.

PICTURES: RAPHAEL NEAL

FEATURING MUSIC FROM STAR WARS • JURASSIC PARK • SUPERMAN E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL AND MORE!

FRIDAY 24 MAR 2023: 7.30PM

USHER HALL, EDINBURGH

SATURDAY 25 MAR 2023: 7.30PM SEC ARMADILLO, GLASGOW rsno.org.uk

A man of apparent contradictions, Eshaan Akbar chats to Jay Richardson about antagonising audiences, a love-hate relationship with miners, and his distress at Apu’s axing from The Simpsons

After almost a decade as a stand-up, Eshaan Akbar defines his ‘brand’ as light-hearted takes on ‘the stuff that everyone gets furious about’. And he reckons he doesn’t attract as much hate as he deserves. An independent thinker who made his Live At The Apollo debut at Christmas, he is also, instinctively, a button-pusher and wind-up merchant.

‘I’m reflecting how the world operates, in that everyone now gets very angry, very quickly,’ the 38-year-old reasons.

‘Sometimes things I say end up being quite antagonistic. Over time, people have learned that a lot of what I say is tongue in cheek, and they now don’t bite in the same way. Though sometimes they do. And I find that very entertaining.’

Akbar’s politics tend to remain his own. He just wants ‘to have as much fun as I can. I’ve never believed in the power of comedy to change hearts and minds.’ As likely to appear on the BBC’s religious programme Sunday Morning Live as on ‘laddy’ podcast Have A Word, the lapsed Muslim is ‘infuriatingly untribal’, according to fellow comic Rosie Holt. Privately educated on a scholarship, ‘a rare brown kid, arriving at school in a Honda Accord rather than a Range Rover’, Akbar was raised by a working-class, trade-unionist father from Pakistan and a Thatcherite Bangladeshi mother: ‘two countries that had a major civil war. I grew up hearing all views. I would also espouse any opinion that gave me the outcome I needed because I wanted a nice dinner. Sometimes I hated the miners. Sometimes I loved them!’

Now on his first tour, The Pretender, the erstwhile journalist, banker, political speechwriter and Bollywood dancing choreographer is seeking to foreground our inconsistencies and say why they’re OK. ‘I’m trying to highlight that no one can be 100% left-wing or right-wing; we can’t possibly present the same version of ourselves to everybody. And I think that’s been forgotten. A lot of my material reflects me saying things that people don’t expect me to.’ In The Pretender, the nonimpressionist talks about voicing Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid for Spitting Image, ‘an appointment made in order to improve representation,’ he admits. ‘But there is no reason for a brown person to voice another brown person. I was distraught when they got rid of Apu from The Simpsons, because it mattered not a jot to me that Hank Azaria voiced him.’

Akbar has also just shot his acting debut in the fourth series of Netflix’s hugely popular comedy-drama Sex Education. ‘I’ve had to play so many different roles in my life and I can tap into that with acting,’ he says. ‘I’ve worked in government, banking and journalism, and what I’ve realised is that everyone is stupid. We’re force-fed this idea that they’re cleverer than they are. We keep elevating these people to positions of power and influence, just because they’re able to have highfalutin conversations over a glass of chardonnay.’

Eshaan Akbar: The Pretender, The Stand, Glasgow, Sunday 26 March, as part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival; The Stand, Edinburgh, Wednesday 29 March.

I’ve realised that everyone is stupid ”

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COMEDY SPECIAL ESHAAN AKBAR

“A huge celebration of his terrible taste in music ”

Who are the best people to ask for Glasgow Comedy Festival recommendations? The comedians themselves, of course. We got 11 of them to pick out the one show that they’re desperate to see

ALAN BISSETT

I’d love to catch Jay Lafferty at The Stand. She has a great, bouncy energy and highly likeable patter. A cracking act.

 Alan Bissett: Moira In Lockdown, Òran Mór, Sunday 2 April; Jay Lafferty: Bahookie, The Stand, Saturday 1 April.

AMELIA BAYLER

When Elaine Malcolmson was a guest on my podcast she said her past was a lot more chaotic (think double acts/sketch shows/ madness), and Commissioned has that vibe. Elaine brings together comedians who are going to write material on a theme chosen by the audience.

 Amelia Bayler: Singing Lessons, Van Winkle, Thursday 30 March; Elaine Malcolmson: Commissioned, McChuills, Sunday 2 April.

CELYA AB

It was difficult to choose one, especially as I’ve seen a fair few already; all excellent, but it has to be David McIver. He writes really nice off-beat jokes and just knows his stage persona so well. He makes me laugh a lot.

CHARLIE VEROMARTIN

I’m desperate to see Norwegian clown Viggo Venn’s show. Everything I have seen of his so far has been so brilliantly silly and makes me laugh so hard.

 Charlie Vero-Martin: Picnic, McChuills, Tuesday 21 March; Viggo Venn: Club Comedian, Blackfriars, Thursday 30 March.

CHRIS FORBES

I saw Ania Magliano for the first time at the start of the year and was blown away by how funny, unique and confident she was despite still being a relative newcomer. The kind of act you’ll say ‘I saw her years ago at The Old Hairdresser’s’ once she’s a megastar. Worth seeing for her ‘horse girl’ routine alone.

 Chris Forbes, The Stand, Saturday 18 March; Ania Magliano: Absolutely No Worries If Not, The Old Hairdresser’s, Saturday 18 March.

CONNOR BURNS

GRUBBY LITTLE MITTS

Phil Green is a great storyteller and his show is so much fun. It’s a stand-up multimedia show featuring loads of 90s nostalgia, with him chatting about his dysfunctional family, politics and ADHD. And it’s a huge celebration of his terrible taste in music: one-hit wonder follow-up singles. Strong Grubb energy.

 Grubby Little Mitts, Blackfriars, Saturday 1 April; Phil Green: 90s Boy – Blair, The Lovegun And Me, Van Winkle, Saturday 1 April.

RIA LINA

Kwame Asante’s In Stitches is exactly my kind of show. I may be biased as a science geek, but Kwame’s stories from working as an A&E doctor are hilarious, and he sprinkles some everyday humour in there too.

 Ria Lina, Room 2, Tuesday 21 March; Kwame Asante: In Stitches, Van Winkle, Saturday 18 March.

SUCHANDRIKA CHAKRABARTI

Bit Thursday 16 March.

Celya AB Has A Bit Of Fun (Is That Such A Crime?), The Old Hairdresser’s, Sunday 19 March; David McIver: Small Boy Trapped In A Wellness Retreat, Gilchrist Postgraduate Club,

Every comedian’s work is a patchwork quilt of their influences. I would definitely have to sew a Jim Jefferies patch into mine. To see such a gut-wrenchingly honest comic perform live in a city that values authenticity is very exciting.

 Connor Burns: Live, Laugh, Loathe, The Stand, Sunday 19 March; Jim Jefferies: Give ‘Em What They Want, SEC, Wednesday 8 March.

EMMANUEL SONUBI

I’m very much looking forward to seeing Andrew Maxwell’s Krakatoa. This show is a delightful mix of witty observations, hilarious anecdotes and clever wordplay that will have you laughing from start to finish. His unique style and energetic stage presence will leave you thoroughly entertained.

 Emmanuel Sonubi: Emancipated, Òran Mór, Friday 31 March; Andrew Maxwell: Krakatoa, Òran Mór, Saturday 25 March.

I’ve seen evidence that Susan Riddell really is living her second-best life: aren’t we all these days? I met her while gigging in Brighton, then her phone went AWOL on the train back to London. She laughed her way through the pain though, so I’ve got high hopes for her show.

 Suchandrika Chakrabarti: Reunion/Afterparty, Van Winkle, Wednesday 22 March; Susan Riddell: Living My 2nd Best Life, The Stand, Tuesday 28 March.

TESSA COATES

Now, this is a bit of a cheat, because he’s also my friend, but I think Kieran Hodgson’s comedy is some of the finest work to grace god’s green earth and I can’t wait to see this new show. He came to stay with me recently and made us watch University Challenge and he scored 36! Can you imagine? I scored one, and that was only because I kept saying ‘Degas. Degas’. Until, eventually, it was ‘Degas’.

 Tessa Coates: Get Your Tessa Coates You’ve Pulled, The Old Hairdresser’s, Sunday 19 March; Kieran Hodgson: Big In Scotland, The Old Hairdresser’s, Sunday 19 March.

Tours sincerely

JON RICHARDSON

Never one to wear his worries lightly on a sleeve, the Cats Does Countdown captain goes full pelt with The Knitwit, as he frets about lights being left on in empty rooms and ruminates on how smooth the margarine should be before it’s returned to the fridge.

 King’s Theatre, Glasgow, Wednesday 19 April; Edinburgh Playhouse, Thursday 20 April.

DAVE GORMAN

One of comedy’s perennial get-up-and-go types, Gorman brings fans more PowerPoint To The People, a show which features a found poem created from below-the-line comments, and considers his mother’s inability to grasp what a sliding doors moment actually means.

 King’s Theatre, Glasgow, Saturday 22 April; Edinburgh Playhouse, Sunday 23 April.

JAYDE ADAMS

Promising to take men by the hand and save them (in order to save us all), the 2022 Strictly contestant will showcase her intelligent working-class Bristolian voice to tell ‘it’ like it is.

 The Stand, Glasgow, Saturday 6 May; The Stand, Edinburgh, Sunday 7 May.

DEAR BILLY

Accompanied by a live band, Gary McNair tells the stories and memories which everyone in Scotland appears to have about the Big Yin. He aims to gather up new ones as the tour goes along, making each show potentially different from the next.

 Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Thursday 18–Saturday 20 May; touring until Friday 23 June.

CHLOE PETTS

One of the true rising stars of Britain’s stand-up game, Petts returns to these parts after a very successful Edinburgh Fringe with Transience, a tale of gender identity, sexuality, prom photos and being a ‘child geezer’.

 The Stand, Glasgow, Saturday 27 May; The Stand, Edinburgh, Sunday 28 May.

JUDI LOVE

This straight-talking powerhouse offloads some fresh, unapologetic and charismatic talk on us as the Loose Women regular (and another Strictly survivor) unleashes ‘unrelenting anecdotes’ from her life.

 Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Thursday 8 June.

DANIEL SLOSS

Everyone’s favourite Fifer Viking drops into his adopted home city slap bang in the centre of a lengthy European tour of Can’t. But he can, and will, make you laugh very hard indeed.

 Edinburgh Playhouse, Thursday 10 August; SEC, Glasgow, Saturday 11 November.

KAE KURD

Clever title this: Kurd Immunity has the UK-Kurdish stand-up trying very hard to be the best man he can be. But how easy is that to achieve in this tricky old modern world?

 The Stand, Glasgow, Wednesday 25 October.

LUCY BEAUMONT

The Trouble And Strife hits the road, a debut national tour featuring off-kilter tales, odd anecdotes and some bizarre adventures across the terrain of modern-day womanhood.

 Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Wednesday 15 November.

ROSS NOBLE

Who else would bring the public a Jibber Jabber Jamboree than the freewheeling Australia-residing Cramlington-born comic? He insists that his new show is akin to ‘watching someone create a magic carpet on an enchanted loom’.

 Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Saturday 25 November.

The remainder of 2023 is packed with top comedians heading out to venues across the nation, keeping us laughing right up to Christmas. Here’s just a bunch of those who are standing up and delivering

Hitting the road (from top): Jon Richardson; Jayde Adams; Judi Love; Lucy Beaumont

Dollar brand

After claiming 2022’s Scottish Album Of The Year Award, pianist Fergus McCreadie is putting the finishing touches to a new album and heading out on tour. He tells Megan Merino why musicians should always be learning

It’s been a busy year for Dollar-raised jazz pianist Fergus McCreadie who, among a flurry of awards for his second album Forest Floor, was nominated for the esteemed Mercury Prize. McCreadie was both the only Scot and jazz musician among the nominees (which included Sam Fender, Gwenno, Self Esteem and the ultimately victorious Little Simz).

In an unprecedented turn of events, this class of 2022 got to experience a tense ceremony twice, when the original event coincided with the Queen’s death. ‘I think the atmosphere first time round was one of the strangest things I’ve ever experienced in my life,’ recalls McCreadie. ‘But it was so cool to finally see all this honestly good music. I also love Little Simz, so I was very happy to see her win.’

Even without a trophy and £25k cheque (that blow would surely have been softened somewhat by winning the Scottish Album Of The Year Award and Jazz FM Instrumentalist Of The Year), garnering more attention in the Mercury’s aftermath is unavoidable.

‘I think it brings with it a bit more pressure,’ McCreadie admits. ‘The awards mean a lot in certain ways. But in terms of how you actually make your music, having an award doesn’t make it any better than it already was. More people will just naturally find it. I’m still getting used to that heightened element of what people expect from the music and from me as a piano player now. I think the challenge is to just focus on the music itself.’

Back in Glasgow, where he first moved to attend the jazz course at Royal Conservatoire Of Scotland, McCreadie has slotted back into a life of teaching, gigging and practising, while also finishing a new album due in 2024. ‘I’m enjoying going back to the fundamental stuff like scales, classical pieces or old-style jazz, and trying to make that sound really good.’

McCreadie’s commitment to personal growth is evident. ‘I don’t think music will be interesting when I feel like I’ve completed it,’ he insists, before adding ‘I can probably do about 1% of what I want to be able to do on the piano.’ This philosophy was partially instilled in him by Scottish jazz maestro Richard Michael whose workshop completely changed the way McCreadie thought about music. ‘I was very close to quitting at around grade six. I think I viewed it as a slog and never thought that I was necessarily natural at playing piano . . . until I found jazz. In that workshop he was focusing on how fun it was and that getting better wasn’t really to do with talent.’

Whether bestowed by nature or nurture, McCreadie’s clean and buoyant style of playing combined with his folk-tinged compositions have distinguished him ever since those days at RCS. As one of only two pianists in his first year, it was through playing with older students at recitals that he met David Bowden and Stephen Henderson (bassist and drummer, respectively, in the Fergus McCreadie Trio). ‘They were scary people to play with because they were just so good even then. But it ended up always feeling really natural and easy.’

Six years on, the three friends still manage to keep each other on their toes, musically speaking, even if they know the tracks inside and out. ‘We try and do every gig without a set list or plan. When you have musicians that you know really well, you can find interesting new things in the tunes and develop them in different ways as you go. I think the best musicians remain students their whole lives. I like to think that even in 20 or 30 years’ time, I’ll still view myself as one.’

Fergus McCreadie Trio, St Luke’s, Glasgow, Thursday 2 March; Fruitmarket, Edinburgh, Friday 10 March.

South St David St EH2

Ticket

Roald Dahl’s classic tale Charlie And The Chocolate Factory has morphed from page to big screen and is now an eye-popping stage musical. As its cast gear up for an Edinburgh run, Kelly Apter chats to Gareth Snook about the daunting task of being Willy Wonka

to ride

It’s Thursday afternoon at Leeds Playhouse and a strange calm has settled over the building. Just 30 minutes earlier, 1000 children from primary schools across the city were whooping and hollering as the cast of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory took their bow. Now, with a matinee under their belt and an evening performance yet to come, the performers are taking it easy. In Gareth Snook’s dressing room, a day bed is calling him for a nap. But first, we’re going to talk about what it’s like to play one of the most iconic figures in children’s fiction: Willy Wonka.

>> Hanging motionless on a rail, yet somehow still full of life, is Snook’s costume: shiny orange waistcoat with coloured buttons, purple top hat and tails, vibrant patterned trousers and a green cravat. An outfit as multi-layered, off-kilter and ever-so-slightly unhinged as Wonka himself. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ says Snook as we gaze appreciatively at the colourful concoction of materials. It certainly is. And what, you have to wonder, is it like to wear it?

‘It’s absolutely fantastic,’ he says with a wide grin. ‘Once you get that costume on, it’s empowering. And the cane, of course, is like an extension of him, no question about it. Without it, I don’t think he’d know who he is; it gives him a lot of power. But I’ve always found it fascinating: why is he dressed like that? Why did Roald Dahl, who was writing in the 1960s, elect to dress him in a purple frockcoat like some kind of Edwardian throwback? It’s always puzzled me.’ Puzzled or not, Snook wears it well. On stage, he’s the epitome of maverick elegance, wit and charm as he shows his unsuspecting young guests around the factory. He’s also got his work cut out to win over an audience for whom, depending on your age, Willy Wonka is inextricably linked to someone else. Snook felt the same way until he dived into the role.

‘I was a huge fan of Gene Wilder, obviously, and Johnny Depp in the more recent film,’ he says. ‘I didn’t read Dahl’s novel until I found out I was doing this show, but found it fascinating because I had a completely different impression after reading it compared to watching the films. But Wonka is the kind of character that, when an actor plays him, you have to make it your own. There’s no other way about it. And I’ve found that you never stop inventing him; he changes literally from performance to performance. I discover things and see new aspects of this mercurial character, this multifaceted man.’

Packed with new songs played by a live orchestra, and with a book that stays true to the original storyline but places more emphasis on kindness, this musical version is very much a show of two halves. With a mother and grandparents as worn out as the furniture, young Charlie (who is played by a boy or girl at alternate performances) provides the

CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY

enthusiastic buzz in act one. A palpable excitement mounts within the crowd as we get closer to them finding the golden ticket, but essentially it’s all very natural and normal. Act two, on the other hand, is a riot of colour befitting Wonka and his costume. From a chocolate river to the great glass elevator, much of the incredible journey those children undertake is depicted by exciting video designs. All of which is timed perfectly to the action on stage, something that didn’t happen overnight.

‘We all worked really hard to get that right,’ says Snook. ‘We didn’t have any visuals during the rehearsal process because they were still being made. The video designers would send us excerpts or ideas of what it would be like, but we didn’t really know until we got into the technical rehearsals. There are some scenes when we can’t see a single thing that’s happening behind us, so it’s all done to musical cues. But I think it’s a genius idea, because Wonka’s world is fantastical anyway. There’s something about trying to create a real chocolate waterfall and river. It’s a world that nobody has ever seen before, so I think the video idea works really well. Although it’s not a real waterfall, and we know that it’s animated, somehow you just go with it. It’s really clever.’

Despite loving the cheers and excitable applause dished out by the primary school kids earlier that day, Snook relishes the evening performances. Colour and spectacle aside, David Greig’s script is not without humour, some of which lands in little one’s laps, some of which flies a few inches above their heads. ‘With a matinee of school groups, you can’t hang around for your laughs,’ says Snook with a stage wisdom shaped by years of experience. ‘You’ve just got to keep going and understand that it’s not going to happen. I think the best reactions come when there’s an equal mix of adults and children. You get awe from the kids and also good laughs from the grown-ups; they can see Wonka’s cheekiness.’

Charlie And The Chocolate Factory: The Musical, Edinburgh Playhouse, Wednesday 29 March–Saturday 15 April.

CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY

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5TH SEASON VINTAGE

Founded as a Depop page in 2019, the name 5th Season Vintage will already be familiar to enthusiasts of the genre. Now its creator Lauranne Bourgaux, along with Kieran MacRury-Gandhi, has given the popular online shop a permanent home on Leith Walk, to showcase her handpicked 70s and 90s pieces in the esh. The agship store boasts colourful retro interiors and an ever-changing selection of classic unisex clothing. Wool coats, French archive cargo skirts, knitwear and designer pieces all line the shelves, each one chosen for their quality and uniqueness. With items sourced in Europe, Bourgaux’s distinctive curation has already made her very welcome in Leith’s slow-fashion community. (Megan Merino)

 28 Haddington Place, Edinburgh, @5thseasonvintage on Depop & Instagram.

We love to bring to our customers the best products in the market, therefore our ingredients are carefully selected by the best producers in Scotland, the UK and abroad.

✤ Organic flour, eggs, butter and coffee

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✤ Brunch, lunch and cocktails

✤ Live music events

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Monday - Friday: 8.30 - 17.00 Weekends: 09.00 - 17.00

1 Hope Park Terrace, EH8 9LZ , Edinburgh 0131 2814355

growing pains

Scottish journalist Louise Gray’s new book looks at the stories behind our favourite fruits and vegetables. Donald Reid caught up with her to discuss the many questions served up along with our greens

Edinburgh-based writer Louise Gray has been challenged by food in the past. Researching her first book, The Ethical Carnivore, she spent a year only eating meat from animals she had killed herself. A former environment correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, she has jumped from the frying pan into the steamer with her latest book Avocado Anxiety: And Other Stories About Where Your Food Comes From. Using 12 familiar fruits and vegetables, she considers what turns out to be a formidable array of accompanying ethical, environmental, economic, social and dietary concerns.

After that 2016 debut, surely taking on vegetables would be less, well, meaty? A side order, particularly from a Scottish perspective. After all, aren’t Scots and vegetables locked in a joyless marriage?

‘That’s the myth,’ says Gray, ‘but there’s a danger in playing to the stereotypes. In writing this book, I’ve found many examples of positive relationships between Scots and their fruit and veg. The country has a great heritage of farming and growing.’

Gray notes the quality of our world-class seed potatoes and reminds us that Lanark Valley tomatoes were once exported. ‘We’re famous for strawberries and raspberries, and once upon a time apples too,’ she explains. ‘There are waiting lists for allotments and Scottish institutions like The Rowett Institute are doing really important research into how locally grown fava beans can be important sources of plant protein, or uncovering the photochemical properties of foraged leaves and plants.’

Gray’s instinctive positivity around fruit and vegetables also stems from her grandmother’s tales of growing up in the family business, Rankins, which ran greengrocer shops across Edinburgh from the 1920s to 1980s. ‘She surprised me. She said that fruit and vegetables in today’s sterile supermarket aisles aren’t so colourful now, and there’s less variety. I thought that in the past it was all tatties and turnips. Her experience with the greengrocers shops was that they were all competing with each other so they were making it beautiful.

It was a more sensory, exciting experience; there were smells, dirt and personality with all the different varieties and the places where they’d come from.’

The loss of joy plays to the book’s central theme that we now approach food (vegetables no less than the more obviously contentious battleground of meat) with a particularly paralysing combination of anxiety and powerlessness. Fruit and veg appear year-round in our supermarkets, but it’s a miracle tempered by the many knotty issues that attend the globalised food system. Avocados may have moved on from ‘alligator pears’ to become a signifier of millennial hipsters. But at the same time, they stir up angst about water use, fair trade, pesticides, food miles, packaging and food waste, not to mention dietary fibre and whatever the ‘right’ kind of fats might be.

Is Gray just offering a new suite of reasons for Scots to be gloomy about their greens?

‘We can’t be perfect in our food choices, and even there I find wonky veg or blemished fruit can actually be a reminder of what it is to be human. Eating more vegetables won’t solve all the problems of the world, but it can help. Environmentally it would help. It can benefit diversity on farms. It connects us to our landscape, which is important to the human psyche. It’s a step to tackling our health crisis. Fruit and vegetables can help society function better.’

Avocado Anxiety is out now published by Bloomsbury; follow @loubgray on Twitter and Instagram for Edinburgh launch event information.

PICTURES: ANGUS BLACKBURN

Researched and compiled by The List’s food and drink team, tipLIST shines a light on the places worth knowing about around Edinburgh and Glasgow in different themes, categories and locations. This month, we dive into ramen, looking at spots dedicated to the art of noodles served in dashi (broth) that encapsulate the warmth of Japanese comfort food

Places to get your fill of ramen

tipLIST

Grab a bite near . . .

The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh

EDINBURGH GLASGOW

GULP

9 Albert Place, gulpramen.com

Steaming bowls of handmade noodles are served beneath vibrant murals at this wee Leith Walk joint. Somewhere between a broth and a bisque, there’s French fine dining flare to the shoyu ramen and a South-East Asian kick to laksa-style veggie ramen.

HAKATAYA

120–122 Rose Street South Lane, hakatayauk.com

Tucked down one of the laneways off Rose Street, Hakataya is reminiscent of a Japanese izakaya. Unfussy yet stylish inside, it offers casual classics like donburi rice bowls alongside a decent selection of ramen. Their signature miso-based pork ramen is subtle and warming.

HIBIKI

45 North Castle Street, hibiki-japanese.co.uk

Sleek and sophisticated, this one is an impress-yourdate option. It’s a general Japanese bistro, so you’ll find teriyaki chicken and a standard sushi selection, but the tantanmen ramen, with its powerful hit of chilli and tonkotsu topped with tender pork, make it a noodle lovers’ destination, too.

IKIGAI

29–30 South Bridge & 13 West Crosscauseway, ikigairamen.co.uk

The hole-in-the-wall vibe of this original Ikigai properly reflects the ramen joints of Shinjuku. Meanwhile, over at South Bridge, you can secure a table for more than two. Umami-rich ramen topped with jammy-yolked eggs soak handmade noodles with just the right amount of bite.

MAKI & RAMEN

3 West Richmond Street, makiramen.com

They’ve a slew of sites, but it’s Maki & Ramen’s original branch that embraces the no-frills joy of ramen. Those that like their noodles super-spicy can try rust-red hell ramen while black tonkotsu ramen is so garlicky you could ward off vampires.

ICHIBAN

50 Queen Street, ichiban.co.uk

Glasgow’s introduction to long, bench-style seating and hip Japanese stylings came with these guys over 20 years ago. Their chilli chicken ramen is still a comforting go-to for many shoppers in-the-know, and you can choose (soybased) shoyu broth or kimchi broth as well.

MAKI & RAMEN

21 Bath Street, makiramen.com

They’re often queuing out the door at the Glasgow site of this Edinburgh favourite. Noodles are handmade, stocks are glistening and punchy, and the chashu pork belly is slow cooked with serious know-how. Sushi and chicken karaage are also popular.

NUKU NUKU

189 Hope Street, nuku-nuku.business.site

Options like eel or duck set this place apart, and chicken is crisp and more intensely flavoursome than elsewhere. Meanwhile, the no-frills café vibe and keen pricing have an obvious appeal to the local student population and lunchtime workers.

OKOME

161 Byres Road & 1100 Pollokshaws Road, okome.co.uk

They’re low-key affairs but the broth is strikingly rich and creamy at Okome, while boiled eggs arrive infused with flavour and glossy of yolk. Try the ichiban ramen, where king prawn and kamaboko (fishcake) flank the pork, while softshell crab tempura is a delightful accompaniment.

RAMEN DAYO

31 Ashton Lane & 1126 Argyle Street, ramendayo.com

A stylish spot off Byres Road and a new one in Finnieston show the pomp with which this outfit struts its stuff. Numerous exciting options include delicate ‘New Wave Tokyo Style’ chicken broth or the umami and black garlic onslaught of ‘Shiitake x Porcini’.

THE DOGHOUSE

18–24 Clerk Street, facebook.com/ TheDogHouseEdinburgh

There’s always an interesting pop-up on the go here; right now it’s popular vegan Mexican outfit Antojitos. The bric-a-brac décor makes it one of the funkiest spots for a pre-show pint in the area.

JUNK

58 South Clerk Street, wearejunk.co.uk

After winning numerous street food accolades, Junk has expanded into this wine-bar-like permanent spot. Pun-tastic ‘sandwiches’ and artfully presented small plates populate the evening menu.

KIM’S MINI MEALS

5 Buccleuch Street, facebook.com/mrkimsfamily

No bookings: just show up, queue and eat some of the best bibimbap in the city, served in sizzling stone bowls and topped with a raw egg, as it should be.

MACAU KITCHEN

93 St Leonards Street, macaukitchen.uk

Portuguese-Chinese fusion is this place’s USP, inspired by the street food of Macau, spices of Goa and tropical climes of Malacca. The duck glazed in plum wine is worth crossing town for.

TAPAS3

6–8 Howden Street, tapas3.co.uk

Head here for classics like chorizo in red wine and padron peppers. The sharing aspect (and sangria) makes this a solid choice for larger groups.

Ikigai Ramen Dayo

street food

We choose a street and tell you where to eat. Jay Thundercliffe takes us on the first leg of Glasgow’s Great Western Road, from St George’s Cross to Kelvinbridge

THE HUG AND PINT

For several years, this upstairs/downstairs venue has been keeping local drinkers and music fans entertained and extremely well fed on inventive vegan delights from its teeny kitchen. Named after an Arab Strap album, it’s a breath of wholesome indieness at the St George’s end of the road.

BAR BRETT

Set up by the Charalambous brothers (whose Cail Bruich down the road brought Michelin back to town), this contemporary wine bar serves up exciting, low-intervention wines in an attractive corner spot. Seasonal small plates to accompany the wine are expertly put together right in front of drinkers, with the help of a real fire grill.

LA LANTERNA WEST END

Like a tricky second album, this Kelvinbridge sister to the venerated city centre Italian restaurant (est. 1970) took over four decades to appear. The West End venue is light and contemporary in easy-going hues compared to the basement original, but has a similarly deft touch with top-class Italian ingredients and dishes.

ROOTS, FRUITS AND FLOWERS CAFÉ

The long-standing grocer’s takeover of the block at Kelvinbridge is nearly complete with this lovely new corner café. It’s been years in the making, with extensive work creating a real looker featuring warm woody vibes and huge windows. An all-day brunchy menu does eggs and sourdough many ways, bolstered by enticing pastries and bakes.

PAESANO PIZZA

At the vanguard of the pizza revolution in Glasgow, Paesano’s second venue in town (the original is in the Merchant City) released the former bank at Kelvinbridge from the clutches of Costa. It’s a classy and cosy setting, where pizzaioli fling out their delicious take on Neapolitan-style pizzas.

David Kirkwood reports on the latest news and openings as Nico Simeone’s food empire continues to grow

Flaunting a deep-fried haggis bar with caramel and Bovril, as well as the iconic dish they named themselves after, London’s Duck & Waffle has finally joined the ranks at Edinburgh’s St James Quarter. It’s not quite the 24-hour opening experience of the original, but 8am–1am at the weekend is still pretty bold. Elsewhere, Lucky Yu (previously seen on Elm Row and Leven Street) is opening in the former Smoke Stack site on Broughton Street, offering bao, cocktails and yakitori. Meanwhile, Buck’s Bar, who already have three much-loved fried-chicken joints in Glasgow, now have one in Edinburgh too, on Grindlay Street.

And while we’re on the subject of expanding Glaswegian empires, by the time you read this, Nico Simeone will have opened his third Six By Nico in the city, this time in the old Fopp on Byres Road. Also new from Simeone is Valaria Bakery, an elegant French patisserie and bakery which has opened on the opposite side of the street. The team behind The Loveable Rogue have given Bearsden a quirky Italian in Oi Mamma (see our full review, opposite) while Tonkotsu masters Ramen Dayo have moved into the old Alchemilla spot in Finnieston. Rounding off the new openings, Dennistoun’s coffee culture now has a Grain & Grind in the old Wild Fleurs space.

In drinks news, the UK’s Top 50 Cocktail Bars awards recently took place in London, with Glasgow’s Lunar and The Absent Ear, and Edinburgh’s Hey Palu, Bramble and Panda & Sons (which made the top ten) all getting a nod. That’s 10% of the entire list, people!

side dishes

Valaria Bakery

RESTAURANT OI MAMMA

On a shopping parade close to Hillfoot Station in Bearsden, this Italian restaurant comes courtesy of the husband-and-wife owners of Glasgow’s Loveable Rogue bars (one West End, one East End, both well received). Fans of previous incarnation Raffaelle’s will find little here to deter them, with the new operation feeling more polite takeover than fresh-slate overhaul.

The interior remains intact; contemporary, lively, with statement walls and peppered by decorative fittings. Half the downstairs is a well-stocked bar and stool area, suited to popping in for a vino from the all-Italian list or a more globally inspired cocktail. A mezzanine bumps up the covers, as do alfresco tables, albeit alongside the fairly unwelcoming Milngavie Road.

Many staff from the previous restaurant have returned, and for new employees the compact all-day menu will be a breeze to memorise. Snacks and starters include nduja hummus with flatbread topped with nutty garlic shards, and a plate of quality salami (fennelly finocchiona and flattened Roman spinata). From a half-dozen pastas, spaghetti with punchy pesto is strikingly presented with a meringue-like topping of creamy burrata and pecorino shavings.

The pizzas are probably the stars here, turning heads as they pass, with their puffed-up crusts and gooey fior di latte cheese. A handful of topping options include vibrant San Marzano tomato and pesto, and uber-rich gorgonzola, mushroom and garlic, drizzled with truffle oil. The trio of mains includes breadcrumbed cutlet pollo alla Milanese, needing some company from an additional side salad or the enjoyable if diminutive strati di patate: layered potato with anchovy and parmesan topping. (Jay Thundercliffe)  151–155 Milngavie Road, Glasgow, oimamma.com

RESTAURANT JUNK

Street-food darlings Junk may have landed a permanent home in a former beauty parlour on South Clerk Street, but the key to understanding how they turn trash to treasure doesn’t lie in their funky brick-exposed slip of a restaurant with an NYCvibe. It’s not even in their clutch of street food awards, won more or less straight out of the starting gate. Nope, the key to Junk is their website, where they share dozens of recipes that (apparently) us mere mortals can easily replicate at home. That their recipe for common or garden ‘chups’ features three different garnishes and around 30 steps is a major clue that this place obsesses over simple ingredients and takes them to places your average cook just does not.

That said, Junk’s box-fresh creds have perhaps been slightly over-egged: co-owners Jade Watson and Cameron Laidlaw have 20-plus years of hospitality experience between them. In other words, they knew the rules before breaking them. Junk is a brilliant blend of the best of the restaurant world; warm, welcoming and relaxed, with street food’s four-sauces-in-yourface aesthetic.

That means perfectly seared coley sitting in a thick bed of Thai curry sauce, crisp tatties with sobrassada and black garlic which are worth ordering twice, and prawn cocktail showing up as a dainty skewer of prawns on a soft pile of avo and sambal. The lasagne bite is genius, every surface becoming the ‘crispy bits’ you fight with your siblings for at home. Dinner is fixed price, though whether that’s another nod to high/low dining culture or just a canny way to manage margins isn’t clear. Either way, £32 gets you three sharing plates, which means a trio of lucky diners can sweep the whole menu between them: an eminently sensible idea. Sure, there’s the usual chat about food coming when it’s ready but deft service manages the flow perfectly with a break to order another (excellent) cocktail inbetween. Not your average junk, indeed. (Jo Laidlaw)

 58 South Clerk Street, Edinburgh, wearejunk.co.uk

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Drink up

When I was a pube-free and sexually nonplussed 13-yearold boy, my lunches consisted solely of meringue shells purchased from my local branch of Goodfellow & Steven. I ate like this for six months. No complex carbs, fruit, vegetables or protein. Just immaculate sugar mainlined into my veins, a game of brinksmanship with type 2 diabetes shedding years off my life with every perfect bite. This month’s drinks review choice is heading into similar territory. That’s right, it’s time for mixers, the liquid equivalent of a meringue shell without the filling. Can these gin-diluters stand on their own two feet without alcohol, or will they crumble like a bow-legged Bambi playing barbwire jump-rope?

Remember trying your first flavoured water and thinking it tasted like someone had poured a bag of sugar into a thin ghastly mixture? Dash Water is the opposite of that, light enough to avoid overpowering your palate while offering a subtle flavour that’s light years ahead of H2O. It’s posh water, the kind of drink a toff called Cornelius might offer you while cradling a croquet mallet in his hands and telling you about the house his papa bought him in Islington. But let’s not hold that against it. Despite an upmarket presentation, this is A+ hydration.

Next, Fever-Tree Premium Indian Tonic Water, and if you thought that the punch of a gin and tonic came from the gin, think again. A sip of this bitter mixture will leave you performing more facial contortions than a leatherfaced contestant at the World Gurning Championships, such is its grapefruitlike intensity. Drinking this without alcohol feels like brawling with a bruiser in a back alley: it might not rough you up like a heavy night of gin, but you’ll still feel winded.

Less punishing is Fentimans Pink Rhubarb Tonic Water, which is bitter enough to balance out alcohol without Fever-Tree’s tastebud-napalming assault. Much like Dash, there’s a lightness of touch here. This one’s both a filling and a meringue shell, and for that it receives our Figurative Pavlova Of The Month Award. Your trophy is in the post, Mr F.

BAR FILES

Creative folks reveal their fave watering hole

MUSICIAN ESTHER SWIFT

Here I am, sitting in my Airbnb in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand, thinking about pubs and bars that I love in Edinburgh. I miss many of them and wish I could pick them up and plonk them right in the cabbage patch outside my front door, complete with locally brewed beers, raucous banter and pickled eggs on the counter. Today my pub of choice would be The Tourmalet on the corner of Iona Street and Buchanan Street. I’ve sat there with my dog and my laptop many times . . . and with pals. It’s the place for the big and the small, the wild and comforting, the soft and the hard, and all those shades and shadows that make Leith.

 Esther Swift plays Assembly Roxy, Edinbugh, Saturday 11 March; find all her tour dates listed at estherswift.co.uk

In our regular drinks column, Kevin Fullerton tries a few tasty beverages and lets you know exactly what he thinks of them. This month we need Kevin to talk about . . . mixers

Fiona and Mike Bryant founded their Leith record store on the principles of curiosity and family. They chat to Megan Merino about creating Good Vibes, the neighbourhood shop they’d always wanted to visit

MORE THAN A FEELING

As the foot of Leith Walk begins to re-emerge from layers of tram-induced scaffolding and dust, independent shops like family-run record store Good Vibes are waiting with open arms to welcome in customers. Created by Fiona Bryant and her husband Mike, with support from shop dog Woody and four month-old Scout, this charming space houses a tightly curated selection of new-release and reissue vinyl, as well as books and lifestyle trinkets. ‘We always talked about how cool it would be to have a record shop in our neighbourhood,’ Fiona recalls. ‘Then I couldn’t sleep one night and in the morning I thought, “why don’t we do it? Let’s open the shop that we’d want to go to”.’

Already in the midst of restoring an old Victorian building to create six creative studios, they decided to build their dream store on the ground-floor level. ‘The building was a ships’ chandlery back in the day and the family who ran it lived above,’ notes Fiona. ‘It had been rented to all sorts of people. When we bought it from the original owners it was a bit sad and a lot of work needed done. So we opened the studios a year before we then moved on to this section.’

The result is a small but bright shop with a ‘70s American west coast meets Disneyland’s Small World’ aesthetic, in the words of freelance designer Mike (who created all of Good

Vibes’ visual branding). Records, displayed in plywood boxes and wall-mounted shelves, range from folk and psychedelia to jazz and pop. A few sentimental wild cards, including A Charlie Brown Christmas and ‘Rainbow Connection’ from The Muppet Movie make recurring appearances. ‘We’re not snobby at all; you can like whatever you like,’ insists Fiona. ‘I’d hate to be one of those shops where you’re embarrassed to ask for something. My favourite thing was when we got the Ratatouille soundtrack in and someone bought it!’

From a wide selection of Japanese music to books about physics and social politics, everything in Good Vibes (currently open only at the weekend) is an extension of Mike and Fiona’s personal interests. ‘Sometimes a more curated selection is so much easier on someone’s brain,’ says Mike, ‘especially if they understand the ethos of the space. They know that if they like certain things in here, they’ll probably enjoy a book or record that’s on display. We slowly realised that’s what people have enjoyed about the shop. That it’s just us and what we like.’ Fiona nods, adding, ‘we are open to learning and I think that goes alongside being interested in music. It’s stuff that feeds your brain.’

Good Vibes, 153 Constitution St, Edinburgh, goodvibes.space

PICTURES: JACK ALLEN

what’s in the bag?

AIRPODS

AirPods are vital, even if I think I’m going to lose them every day. I’ve been touring last year’s Fringe show, so whenever I’m about to do a tour show, I listen to the pre-show playlist that the audience listened to, which keeps my head in the right place. That playlist has songs like ‘Paper Planes’ by M.I.A and ‘About Damn Time’ by Lizzo. In general, I also listen to a lot of Mac Miller, Run The Jewels and Action Bronson.

WATER

Sounds silly but I need to remind myself to drink enough water. I love coffee too much (at my caffeinated peak, I was drinking over ten cups a day) so I’m trying to strategically drink as much water as I possibly can to offset my dependency on caramel macchiato.

BOOKS/GRAPHIC NOVELS

I spend half of my life on public transport so books are a must. I’ve recently discovered Bret Easton Ellis. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara is a book I read years ago but I genuinely think about it every day. It’s bleak and beautiful and everyone should read it. Graphic novel recommendations are the wonderful Saga series, Ice Cream Man, Asterix, and In. by Will McPhail.

shop talk

EMILY MILLICHIP

SALTED PEANUTS

Perfect pre-gig snack because they are tasty and release energy slowly. I always have them in my bag. Extra points if you have a resealable bag otherwise you are hoovering peanuts out of the depths of a rucksack.

NOTEPADS

I type a lot of jokes using phone notes but using a pen and writing them down just makes me feel better. All my jokes start long form, then I scribble bits out and change the order up for each gig until I have a list of words to remember; this tour show is 60 minutes long so I have six words written down and I’m good to go.

CAP

Another obsession, along with books and sneakers. I have too many, but they are practical and look cool. This one is from an amazing shop in Edinburgh called Pieute. Good people.

Robin Grainger: Robin Time, The Stand, Glasgow, Sunday 2 April, as part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

This Edinburgh-based artist’s homeware designs are punchy, bright and, most importantly, fun.

Chintzy floral tablecloths are embroidered with ‘EAT THE RICH’, hot pink leopard-print bolster cushions are decorated with skateboard-style stickers, and tropical floral cushions are piped with bright acidic colours. Along with her wry humour, sustainability is at the core of Millichip’s designs, with all pieces made to order in her Portobello studio and offcuts reworked into zero-waste collections.

 Online at emilymillichip.com, @emilymillichip on Instagram

FLOWERS VERMILLION

If you’re looking to recapture the feeling of being a kid in a sweet shop, Flowers Vermillion have nailed it. Their gift shop includes a range of Japanese

Claire

out another trio of must-visit shops and independent sellers

stationery, rails of chore jackets, vintage quilts and sculptural floral bouquets, alongside jars of sugar mice and traffic-light lollipops. Everything about it is inviting and abundantly playful. Whether shopping for yourself or someone else, it’s hard to leave empty handed.

 920 Pollokshaws Road, Glasgow, @vermillion_stores on Instagram

BAM GLASGOW

This basement store is a treasure trove of well-priced vintage and retro glassware. On the main floor, the walls are filled with local art (the twisted ‘Americana’ by Doug Wright is fantastic) and tables are stacked with treats, including candles in vintage jars, decorative plates adorned with bandits rendered in black marker, and lovingly hand-knitted dolls.

 44 Nithsdale Road, Glasgow, bamglasgow.co.uk

Stuart checks

Ahead of his Glasgow International Comedy Festival appearance, Robin Grainger lets Megan Merino have a nose inside his bag. What treasures lie within?

Emily Millichip

going out

TORI AMOS

Ever since the 1992 release of her career-altering solo album Little Earthquakes, Tori Amos has carved out a genuinely distinctive corner for herself within the contemporary rock and pop terrain. Her sold-out Ocean To Ocean tour from last year is back with more shows, including this single Scottish date. Always personal, often subtly (or overtly) political, her work has covered autobiographical issues such as her religious upbringing, sexual assault and miscarriages, while also tackling wider societal woes of homophobia, misogyny, pornography, and the complicated identity and history of America. (Brian Donaldson)

 Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Saturday 25 March.

Paris-born actress Léa Seydoux has made a strong impression in both Europe and Hollywood with a diverse array of films. James Mottram meets the star in her home town to discuss a powerful new movie about family, illness and survival

Early learning

‘Ilike to be a chameleon,’ says Léa Seydoux, sitting in a Paris hotel as she considers a giltedged career that exploded a decade ago when she starred in the Cannes-winning same-sex drama Blue Is The Warmest Colour. Since then, she’s gone from capturing James Bond’s heart in the recent 007 movies to starring in David Cronenberg’s twisted sci-fi Crimes Of The Future, and joining Wes Anderson’s ever-widening ensemble for both The Grand Budapest Hotel and The French Dispatch Although Hollywood has ferociously courted her (she’ll soon be seen in a ‘small part’ in Denis Villeneuve’s epic Dune: Part Two), the 37-year-old Parisian is first and foremost umbilically attached to European cinema. ‘I feel that I have a specific taste,’ she says. ‘I like films that are awkward; that are strange in a way. I think this is what I’m drawn to. I like when there is a mystery about a movie, when I don’t understand completely the whole film.’

Her new film is more a mix of the ordinary and the extraordinary. After premiering in Cannes last year, and now being unveiled for UK audiences at Glasgow Film Festival, One Fine Morning is the brainchild of writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve (Father Of My Children, Things To Come). Seydoux plays Sandra, a single mother living in Paris who must contend with her ailing father (Pascal Greggory). A former philosopher, he suffers from Benson’s syndrome, a horrifying degenerative illness that gradually erodes memory and sight.

‘What I like about One Fine Morning is the emotional dimension,’ Seydoux explains. ‘It’s quite deep and yet it is almost like a documentary. I like this depth; nowadays it’s not something we see very often in films.’ The movie comes inspired by HansenLøve’s experiences with her own father. ‘It was painful but also she was happy to make that movie,’ adds Seydoux. ‘She always said that there are films

you make and films you have to do; she had to do this. It was beyond her will. She had to tell the story.’

In Cannes, the film elicited rapturous ovations from audiences, and you can expect the same in Glasgow. The phrase ‘not a dry eye in the house’ could well apply, but from Seydoux’s grounded performance onwards, there’s nothing mawkish or sentimental about the film. While Sandra can only watch her father slip away from her, at the same time she finds love with an old friend, Clément (Melvil Poupaud). It’s the perfect expression of how life can serve up both pain and pleasure all at once.

Seydoux adds that the way Hansen-Løve approached the portrayal of this illness was commendable. ‘She didn’t make it about performance. It’s not like The Father, for example,’ she says, referring to Florian Zeller’s Oscar-winning dementia drama. ‘I thought that Anthony Hopkins was really amazing. But it’s more about the performance of an actor. What I like

glasgow film festival

about Mia is that it’s very subtle; it looks easy but it’s not. Actually, it’s very precise. She knows exactly what she wants.’

Away from the big screen, Seydoux quietly raises her son Georges with her partner André Meyer, while the only glam thing she gets up to is working for fashion giant Louis Vuitton. ‘I like fashion, but for me it’s something very playful and light. There is no pressure about this. I feel very lucky to be the face of Vuitton but it’s something I take as a plus.’ Clearly this chameleon (fashionista, actress, mother) is not one for taking things too seriously. When I ask if any movie changed her deep down, and what she learned, she replies, slightly tongue in cheek: ‘I think that I’ve understood the meaning of life!’ Touché.

One Fine Morning screens at GFT, Glasgow, Wednesday 8 & Thursday 9 March; in cinemas nationwide from Friday 14 April.

1-hour guided tour

Herstory Tours

Follow Edinburgh’s past residents in underground alleyways and learn about the women who once lived, worked and died on these streets.

ONLY IN MARCH

As Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood And Honey crashes onto big screens, Kevin Fullerton reimagines a few more childhood favourites as future horror classics. Hollywood, you have our number . . .

The kids are not alright

Stabbington Bear

Paddington’s got a special ingredient in his marmalade today: curare, a compound which induces paralysis in all who consume it. Politely offering a sandwich to his victims, the Peruvian scamp loves nothing more than watching their muscles violently atrophy before unleashing the meat cleaver he found in Mr Brown’s kitchen and sliding it into their chest. Blood, as Paddington has learned, tastes better than any marmalade.

The Tiger Who Came To Tear

Tigers famously love a cup of chai, but may god forgive those who get their order wrong. Today Sophie and her mother gave their favourite big cat a lapsang souchong when he wanted a jasmine blossom. Now they must be clawed to death. Expect an Oscar-bait performance as Tiger mournfully shovels Sophie’s body into a binbag. He may be the bane of baristas everywhere, but boy can this wild cat act.

Child Catcher: The Movie!

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’s villainous Child Catcher is given his own star vehicle. Watch as he prods children with sticks as they cry for their parents. Squirm at his attempts to find a match on Tinder. Boo as he’s imprisoned for questionable business practices, then cheer as he clears his name and resumes his beloved pastime of imprisoning infants in rabbit hutches. Sure to be a heartwarming classic. Banned in 14 countries.

glasgow film festival

John Carpenter’s Diary Of A Wimpy Kid

The director of Halloween and The Thing returns with a radical reinterpretation of everyone’s favourite wimp. Forlorn and embittered, the American middle schooler dons a leather mask and decides to dispatch the bullies of his sleepy hometown in increasingly creative ways. Ever wanted to see Rodrick strapped to a chair while Greg waterboards him? Now, lucky cinemagoer, you can.

Dora The Exhumer

What’s in Dora’s backpack? That’s right, human remains. Join everyone’s favourite explorer as she wanders the world’s graveyards, exhuming fresh corpses and transporting them to her home for use in a variety of childfriendly craft projects. Boots The Monkey, now a gnarled and dejected figure, looks on and weeps. Can you say ‘voy a matarte?’ Dora can, and she’s digging up your gran.

Also coming to a theatre near you (hopefully not) . . .

The Very Cannibalistic Caterpillar, Sooty And Dr Sleep, Anthrax Pat, Harry Potter And The Hogwarts Massacre, The Lion Kills You In The Wardrobe, Mr Benn: Portrait Of A Serial Killer, Camberwick Gangrene, Bob The Builder: Hods And Homicide, Don’t F**k With Cats: Bagpuss’ Revenge

Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood And Honey screens at GFT, Glasgow, and is in cinemas nationwide on Friday 10 March.

Ten years ago, he caught the film world’s eye as the troubled teen lead in Peter Mullan’s NEDS. For his latest role, Claire Sawers

finds Glasgow actor Conor McCarron once again trying to stay on the straight and narrow

I’m actually quite squeamish ”

Writer-director James Price, dubbed ‘the Springburn Scorsese’ for his ink-black short films, cast Conor McCarron as the lead in Dog Days after admiring his performances in NEDS and Catch Me Daddy. Grim criminal underworlds, terrifying hardmen and raw, bare-knuckle violence feature on both men’s CVs: a dark music video that Price made for Michael ‘The Sopranos’ Imperioli’s band Zopa was shown at the 2021 Glasgow Short Film Festival.

Dog Days is a six-part BBC drama showing as a one-hour work at Glasgow Film Festival. It follows busker Zoso as he tries to redeem himself in order to get more time with his toddler daughter, Summer, played by McCarron’s real-life child, Bonnie. McCarron worried that the then two-year-old might ruin one scene by acting too familiar with him, given he was playing an estranged father.

‘She’s quite a daddy’s girl so I was concerned it wouldn’t work. But the house we were filming in was filled with kids’ toys and she was mesmerised. She wriggled immediately off my knee, which was perfect.’

Improvisation shaped much of the production which was shot in Dundee during last summer’s bin strike, a moment that merely added extra layers of squalor.

‘Pricey was so open to me making the role my own,’ says McCarron, whose character sleeps rough, takes a savage kicking from a menacing pimp, goes on a first

date and becomes an internet sensation for his busker cover version of ‘Darlin’’, the 1978 hit by Glasgow’s Frankie Miller.

‘He gave me a lot of freedom during filming. Shannon Allan, who plays Zoso’s pal Laura, hadn’t acted before and she was amazing; we went quite off script in those scenes. Mostly because I’m lazy and I hadn’t rehearsed my lines,’ he adds, no doubt with false modesty. As in all Price’s work, toxic masculinity is a dominant and sinister presence, with unresolved fury threatening to sabotage all Zoso’s dreams of a fresh start.

But just as in Price’s debut short Concrete & Flowers, there is a tension between violence and romance, with tender moments pulling Zoso back from the brink of annihilation. A brutal assault featuring weapons hastily purchased from a hardware shop marks a pivotal moment for the character, who must decide whether to seek bloody revenge or take his chances as an unsigned singer-songwriter.

‘I’m actually quite squeamish,’ admits McCarron. ‘I think if the audience is feeling nauseous or uncomfortable at any point, it means you’ve probably done something well. People should feel something. This isn’t Hollywood stuff, it’s much more authentic and natural.’

Dog Days screens at GFT, Glasgow, Sunday 5 March; the full series is on BBC iPlayer and BBC Scotland later this year.

I never in a million years thought I would write a musical

It’s almost 20 years since Edinburgh-born singer-songwriter KT Tunstall made her major breakthrough with Mercury-nominated debut album, Eye To The Telescope. Since then, critical and audience acclaim have followed her all the way, as she picked up an Ivor Novello Award while ‘Suddenly I See’ made it onto Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. Back with a new album and tour, she talks to Fiona Shepherd about writing for the West End, working with a 70s icon, and dealing with hearing loss

It’s great to welcome you back with a new album, Nut. How did that come together through lockdown? What an extraordinarily weird time. It was so strange and discombobulating. I just couldn’t write any lyrics, like day-today reality had grabbed the back of my jumper and I couldn’t get away from the immediate present to go into that little creative dream bubble where I have to go in order to write lyrics. So I sent all my music to my collaborator Martin Terefe, and let go of the reins. That led to one of the weirdest experiences I’ve had making music; I literally sang over the top of his tracks and that process means you have to learn new parts to be able to perform the songs live. It’s been a huge challenge but I’ve really enjoyed learning my own songs. I’ve just got to the point in my life where I think ‘do I like it?’ And if I like it, I’ll do it and I don’t really care what it is. I want to have fun . . .

. . . like duetting with Gilbert O’Sullivan on his song ‘Take Love’? He’s such a lovely dude. I just loved that he was having this renaissance.

. . . and writing a stage musical adaptation of Saving Grace for the West End? I never in a million years thought I would write a musical because I didn’t like them growing up; I found them really cheesy. But one of the attractive things about this was getting to work with Craig Ferguson, who wrote and starred in the original film. We wrote in a villainous banker, so he’s gone from friendly young gardener to the baddie. Part of the reason I’m doing this is because I want to do something else. I don’t just want to write what’s ‘me’. It’s set in this little Cornish village so there’s these folk-band pirate influences. You’ve got to keep giving it different flavours and I found that so fun, having the freedom to write whatever I want that is not for me to sing.

You’ve also got a new partner and a new home I met my boyfriend Chris in the dog park, cos we both rescued dogs. He said ‘what do you do?’ and I said ‘I’m a rock star, what do you do?’ He said ‘I’m a jiu-jitsu instructor’. It was like a John Hughes movie. We’ve moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico: Georgia O’Keeffe land. We just decided to get out of Los Angeles. It’s gone a bit dark since covid, and it made us realise that we wanted to be somewhere smaller and a bit more plugged-in and arty.

In 2021, you announced you would scale back your touring because of hearing loss: how has it affected you? I lost my balance for about three months which was maybe

the worst part of it. I was completely disabled by vertigo which was awful. I got a call from Stephen Ambrose, the guy who invented the original in-ear monitors, and he was prototyping an amazing new bit of kit which transfers sound and frequency through muscle and tissue. I can actually hear better on stage now than before. So they’ve changed the game for me. A lot of other musicians, who are not known to have hearing loss, asked me if it was helping. There is definitely quite a stigma, particularly amongst an older generation of musicians who don’t want to admit that they’re losing their hearing. But honestly, I’m doing absolutely fine. I’ve still got tinnitus in my deaf ear, which is a total bummer. But it’s a mindset; you have to decide that it’s not going to get in your way.

Hence your first Scottish tour since 2018: what can we expect? It’s KT full tilt with a band shaking the walls. Nut is the shortest record I’ve written so we’re able to play the whole album in the set, which I’ve never done before. We’re peppering it with all the favourites. It really feels like a very joyous party. I think it’s going to be a high point of my career.

KT Tunstall plays Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Wednesday 15 March; SEC, Glasgow, Friday 17 March.

TALKS ROXANE GAY

In 2014, Haitian-American writer Roxane Gay labelled herself a ‘bad feminist’ when she published her excellent essay collection of the same name. Her debut novel, An Untamed State, arrived in the same year and she has since added New York Times opinion columnist, Gay Mag editor, and Marvel Comics writer to that list of labels. Oh, and she’s also an iceberg explorer: in 2021 she travelled to Antarctica with her wife, the writer and design podcaster, Debbie Millman.

A relatively new convert to international travel after believing for years that she would be too overweight to fully enjoy the experience, Gay is visiting Scotland for the first time as part of a four-date UK tour. Roxane: With One N is a live evening that is likely to be insightful, funny, frank and straddle many worlds; perhaps a hybrid between her essays and podcast The Roxane Gay Agenda, where she talks about rap, body image, rape culture, race, and reality TV, among many other things. She hints that ‘Trump, Brexit, BoJo, Harry and Meghan’ could all be up for discussion, but with no two shows covering the same ground, it will all depend on what pops into her reliably sharp mind on that particular night. (Claire Sawers)

 Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Thursday 9 March.

ART HOME IS NOT A PLACE

Asking sincere, deep-rooted questions sometimes entails travelling beyond mental and physical borders. When award-winning writer and photographer Johny Pitts and poet Roger Robinson decided to embark on a journey in a red Mini Cooper, armed with a camera, their overriding question was: what is Black Britain?

Their expedition began along the Thames and extended to coastal, rural and urban areas; the resulting photos for this exhibition explore the notion of home. ‘I disagree with the old saying that a photograph is worth a thousand words,’ says Pitts. ‘I think a photograph functions more like a haiku; there is a limited space with which to convey a multitude of potentially ambiguous information. But whether I pick up a pen or camera, I’m trying to do the same thing: record an atmosphere, a feeling, a moment in time.’

Reflecting on the most impactful moments of his journey, Pitts recalls meeting Tim Brannigan in Belfast. Although Brannigan was in the IRA and spent four years in prison on gun charges, it was his birth story that left the greatest imprint. Brannigan was conceived during an affair between his mother and a Ghanaian doctor, but immediately after giving birth, his mother sent the brown-skinned baby away before announcing to her family that he’d died during childbirth.

‘A year later, she adopted him into the family so no one would find out about her affair,’ continues Pitts. ‘That was Tim’s story, and I spent a day wandering with him, learning about the city through his eyes.’ He concludes by disclosing what he hopes for this new and intimate project. ‘I want people to feel a normalised Black British experience. Not Black athletes or footballers, or fashion models or musicians, or activists and protestors, but just people who have brown skin and are British and are going about their everyday lives.’ (Haneen AlEid)

 Stills, Edinburgh, Thursday 9 March–Saturday 10 June.

future sound

future sound

Our column celebrating music to watch continues with Glasgow-based Isa Gordon. She talks to Fiona Shepherd about growing up in the shadow of Robert Burns, not being tied down by a single style, and finding inspiration in an Irish bog

Electronica artist Isa Gordon is a mercurial creator. Her home-recorded music, emanating from a bedroom in Glasgow’s Govanhill, takes handbrake turns to intriguing places. On her 2022 debut album, For You Only, ambient synthscapes are interrupted by scurrying gamelan rhythms, and sonorous, sorrowful piano instrumentals are followed by burnished guitar and folky strings.

Such eclecticism makes sense when she starts to talk about her musical upbringing in Auchinleck and the surrounding exmining communities. ‘Growing up in Ayrshire, there’s a big Burns connection,’ she says, ‘so I got into singing folk music from quite a young age. It seems like it was always a part of what was going on.’ Encouraged by her musical father, Gordon dabbled with the pipes for a while, then clarsach, but it was guitar which chimed with her burgeoning taste for pop, then punk, indie, electronica and metal.

Meanwhile, her gran would take her to classical concerts. ‘That always struck me as an overwhelming experience in the same way that a punk gig would be loud and all-consuming; less about the style and more about the experience.’

Gordon moved to Glasgow 11 years ago to study bio-medical engineering and was soon seduced by the city’s clubbing scene. Soaking up the sounds of homegrown electronica heroes Hudson Mohawke and Rustie, she was inspired to start working on her own machine music. Collaborating with friend Frazer Graham on mini-album Cups, the pair went under the name Resili. This record caught the ear of Keith McIvor aka JD Twitch at Optimo Music.

When her academic contract came to an end during lockdown, she chose to leave the research realm and use the time to finesse her beats with melodic arrangements, ‘trying to get the emotion into them,’ she says. ‘At some point it just clicked and I thought “maybe I’ve got an album here”.’ McIvor clearly agreed, and For You Only was released by Optimo Music last summer. ‘Keith’s very good like that,’ says Gordon. ‘He’ll give anything a chance. A lot of labels have a circle and they stick to that but he’s great for being so open-minded.’

Gordon is already working on a follow-up and has developed a club-friendly live show for Optimo’s March bash at Summerhall. But solo material is far from her only iron in the fire. Harking back to those all-over-the-map roots, she’s formed experimental trio Fantasy Land with Glasgow-based Irish musicians Jack Sheehan and David deBarra, who suggested a lockdown relocation to Tipperary where they worked on their debut album Adult. Gordon and Sheehan also flex their dance muscles on a forthcoming album called Bog Core

‘It was somewhere to go to be loud and be in the countryside while everything was locked down, making the best of a bad situation,’ says Gordon of her gap half-year. ‘It’s quite boggy there and the music we were making sounded a bit boggy, so that was our wee joke. I’m just trying to follow whatever my interest is at the time and I haven’t really thought so much about where it will lead. I’ve just been enjoying the projects I’ve been in.’

Isa Gordon plays as part of Optimo Espacio, Summerhall, Edinburgh, Friday 10 March; Adult is released by GLARC on Saturday 1 April.

DANCE DADA MASILO

‘Grief is not always morbid,’ says Dada Masilo, the South African choreographer bringing a new take on death-andrebirth tale The Rite Of Spring to Edinburgh. ‘Grief releases certain things so that something else can grow. That takes a long time to understand, but I’m understanding it now.’

For Masilo, several things came together to make now the right time to tackle this dance classic, first created by Stravinsky and Ballets Russes in 1913 (Masilo has renamed her version The Sacrifice). Not least because there is the grief and suffering experienced during covid and our current climate crisis. But there are also smaller, personal experiences of mourning and rebirth. Masilo visited her grandmother’s grave and placed an orange lily on it, a flower traditionally associated with death. The symbolism of this gesture (a living flower on the grave of a beloved ancestor) had a huge impact on her. ‘I’m understanding the culture of how we celebrate things. That lily is always going to stay with me.’

The Rite Of Spring has never been an easy watch, telling the unsettling tale of a girl chosen to be sacrificed. In this new version, Masilo fuses her contemporary and classical background with Tswana, a traditional dance from Botswana, which she describes as ‘the most difficult dance to learn, because rhythmically it’s so complex’. It was important, however, that Tswana forms part of the language of this piece, for the connection it draws with her heritage and ancestors. A new score has also been created and will be performed live. While Masilo would not go so far as to describe The Sacrifice as uplifting, she believes its sentiment is relevant. ‘Mother Earth is going “OK, this is what needs to happen”. It’s not about having a choice, but about needing something more to come out of this, especially looking at the world as it is.’ (Lucy Ribchester)  Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Friday 10 & Saturday 11 March.

ARTS

GAELIC CULTURE

Gaelic meets the Wild West with Stornoway, Quebec, the latest production from Theatre Gu Leòr and the pen of Calum L MacLeòid. Starring Elspeth Turner as bounty hunter Màiri MacNèill who is hot on the heels of the enigmatic Dòmhnall Morrison played by Dòl Eoin MacKinnon, this production receives its world premiere at An Lanntair in Stornoway (30 March–1 April), followed by a Scotland-wide tour.

March has a literary focus too, with St Andrews’ international poetry festival StAnza featuring well-known faces Martin MacIntyre, Peter Mackay and Niall O’Gallagher. They’re joined by emerging voices to discuss Gaelic notions of rewilding at The Laidlaw Music Centre (10 March) while Mackay also discusses the work of Màiri Mhòr nan Òran at Parliament Hall (11 March). The Gaelic language features at Oban’s Rockfield Centre for the Celtic Colours exhibition (until 2 April), via textile design studio Crùbag’s marine scientist-cum-designer, Jessica Giannotti de Wolff. The show explores parallels between indigenous language and the craft of colour-making.

If live music is your bag, then Scots Trad Music Awardwinning Rachel Newton (pictured) plays Stirling’s Tolbooth (2 March) and Edinburgh’s Summerhall (3 March). Or if your little ones have dancing feet, then pre-book for Highland Dancing classes, hosted by Glasgow’s An Lòchran, for four weeks starting on Saturday 4 March, just one of a selection of community arts projects led by irrepressible comedian Carina MacLeod. (Marcas Mac an Tuairneir)

As part of their 60th anniversary celebrations, Scottish Opera offer a rare chance to hear a trio of Puccini shorts in one evening, just as the composer initially intended. Carol Main talks to baritone Roland Wood about the challenges of performing Il trittico in its entirety

triplethreat

The trio, the three, the triptych: all are English translations of the Italian Il trittico. Which one of them captures the subtlety of what Puccini had in mind for his three short operas remains unknown. It’s not often that all three are presented together these days but that’s exactly what Scottish Opera’s production of this tale of love and loss will offer audiences. And after all, that’s exactly how the composer had originally planned it.

In partnership with Welsh National Opera and featuring renowned Scottish director David McVicar at the helm, opera lovers will need to set aside a hefty four hours (including two longish intervals) to experience the piece as a whole. Key performer in two of the operas is baritone Roland Wood, a regularly returning Scottish Opera principal over recent years. ‘I love working with David McVicar, who is without a doubt my favourite director to work with,’ he says. ‘It’s a joy to work with someone who is so well prepared, with the meticulous attention to detail and energy that he brings to the room. He knows exactly what he wants, but you can also bring your own interpretation to it.’

Wood explains that all three operas are centred on the love that parents have for their children. The first, Il tabarro is hugely emotional with its sense of impending doom, heard in the orchestral scoring as well as on stage.

‘It can be overwhelming,’ says Wood, ‘but with David

we are in a very supportive environment. We can be vulnerable, but without feeling wrung out at the end of the day.’

The second opera is Suor Angelica, written for allfemale voices and set in a convent. It tells of Sister Angelica, the nun whose illegitimate son has been dead for two years before she knows anything about it. The third, Gianni Schicchi, is a comic piece that’s different in tone from the others. But it also focuses on parental love for their offspring, this time with the daughter singing to her father in Puccini’s superb aria, ‘O mio babbino caro’.

When Il trittico was first performed at the Met in New York, it was Gianni Schicchi that was the trio’s breakout success, and it’s gone on to be frequently performed alone or with other short operas. For Wood though, the operas heard together make a perfect whole. ‘First there’s a tragedy, then a different sort of tragedy, and it then ends with the black comedy of Gianni Schicchi, featuring a loveable rogue. It makes for a Wagnerian evening with a huge cast of singers, actors, children. As a whole, it’s more interesting, more satisfactory and, together, the operas promise an emotional rollercoaster for the audience.’

Il trittico, Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Saturday 11, Wednesday 15, Saturday 18 March; Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Wednesday 22, Saturday 25 March.

Hot on the heels of last year’s acclaimed X, director Ti West’s follow-up delves into the origin story of serial killer Pearl.

Heightened by Mia Goth’s stunning central performance, Katherine McLaughlin finds a dark, multi-layered tale and startling portrait of obsession and ambition

Following a nearly seven-year-long hiatus from feature filmmaking, director Ti West made a bold return with 2022’s X, a brutal love letter to radical 1970s independent movies. In that film, Pearl was introduced as an octogenarian serial killer who viciously offed most of the cast and crew of a porno.

This prequel (starring an incredible Mia Goth who also takes a cowriting credit) tells her origin story, rewinding to 1918 where the young Pearl is slowly losing herself in a panic of isolation, fantasy and repressed sexual desire. Her husband is away at war and a flu pandemic is raging outside. Pearl’s German mother Ruth (Tandi Wright) rules with an iron fist while her wheelchair-bound father (Matthew Sunderland) requires constant care; something that the young anti-heroine has to provide.

The two movies were filmed back-to-back in New Zealand during lockdown, and both are set on the same Texas farm. A third film which takes place in the 1980s, MaXXXine, is currently in production and will complete the trilogy. Both films released so far take great care in their references to cinema history, with Pearl presented in glorious Technicolor and paying twisted homage to the classic golden age of Hollywood filmmaking. If great cinema holds up a mirror to society, then West’s trilogy seems like it’s playing out as a mischievously perverse detour into the psyche of humanity, clinging to hope and frantically reacting to and

film of the month

distracting us from the horrors of reality. Despite being set in the past, its obvious parallels with the modern day speak to collective feelings of loneliness and dread.

Pearl loves the movies. When she makes trips into town to pick up her father’s medication, she visits the picture palace for escape and entertainment. While there, she meets a projectionist (a charismatic David Corenswet) who opens her eyes to the potential of cinema in unlocking her dreams of becoming a big star. The pair whet each other’s appetite for fame: he dreams of making porn and she is full of blind ambition to become a successful dancer. An intimate, flickering scene casts the viewer’s eye to an adult film entitled A Free Ride that may be considered the earliest of its kind and was sourced from the Kinsey Institute. Sex and death motivate Pearl, with West generating a horribly seductive canvas of bloodshed and sheer desperation.

A combination of West’s dazzling world-building and Goth’s enjoyably unhinged powerhouse performance (which includes a melodramatic nineminute long monologue that peels apart the essence of a woman afflicted by circumstance and rejection) makes this a compelling character study and multi-layered, dark fairytale. Everything is gleefully exaggerated and meticulously designed to draw the eye, ear and mind into Pearl’s warped vantage point as she slips deeper into violent behaviour. The continuous score by Tyler Bates and Tim Williams, and richly realised cinematography

by regular collaborator Eliot Rockett, furthers the uncanny ambience and this film’s tribute to 1930s/40s Hollywood.

References to The Wizard Of Oz and 1954’s A Star Is Born flutter stylishly throughout, with Goth wonderfully channelling Judy Garland at various points. In one scene, Pearl embraces a scarecrow, takes him for a dance, and then gives him a good seeing to. It’s all delivered tongue-incheek with hilarious bad taste, but the film doesn’t appear to be laughing at Pearl. It works to lighten the mood in juxtaposition to her intense and claustrophobic home life that plays out like Bergman meets What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?

Pearl works on multiple levels. It’s comical and grotesque yet engaged in the truth that life rarely plays out as expected. An actor or indeed anyone involved in showbiz has to learn how to roll with the punches because they will just keep coming. Pearl hasn’t been afforded with privilege or the tools to do that, and the closing credits play out with Goth looking directly to camera and impressively holding a smile that eventually morphs to reveal a pained expression. West draws back the curtain to reveal a startling portrait of obsession and ambition, and how a lifetime of disappointment and rejection shapes Pearl into the monster we finally meet in X

Pearl is in cinemas from Friday 17 March.

ART

TUAN ANDREW NGUYEN

All That We Are Is What We Hold In Our Outstretched Hands 

All That We Are Is What We Hold In Our Outstretched Hands is a small yet expansive exhibition of Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s work. Entrenched in post-colonial research, Nguyen’s practice is driven by a dedication to illuminate the profound stories of communities whose lives have been impacted by colonialism, war and displacement.

At the heart of this solo piece is a film, The Specter Of Ancestors Becoming (2019). Presented across four screens, it actualises the memories of descendants of West African colonial soldiers who were enlisted during the 1940s Vietnamese uprisings. Through several episodic stories narrated across 28 minutes, we become invested in familial and intergenerational tensions, puzzling together fragments of memories. Most notably, the story about conflict between a father and his son, who has only recently discovered his birth mother’s Vietnamese heritage, is viscerally powerful.

Occasionally, segments of the French narrative is lost on us, as the subtitled film switches screens. The Specter Of Ancestors Becoming doesn’t require watching in the traditional sense; instead, Nguyen’s work demands that viewers surrender to the sporadic nature of this multi-channel installation. The final room exhibits 29 archival family portraits which, although many are beautiful and intimate in their sepia tones, would have benefitted from having labels alongside. (Rachel Ashenden)

 CCA, Glasgow, until Saturday 25 March.

THEATRE UNTIL IT’S GONE (Directed by Caitlin Skinner) 

As Joni Mitchell says, you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone. The opener for this latest lunchtime-theatre season of A Play, A Pie And A Pint imagines a world where women have somehow taken themselves out of the male-female equation. Alison Carr’s play, directed by Caitlin Skinner and presented in association with the Traverse and Stellar Quines, is an all-male two-hander. Billy Mack and Sean Connor play nameless men yearning for female company with their rumination on a shared predicament comprising the gist of the piece.

The setting is a broken-down bench in a park, all ‘brown grass and broken bottles’, sometime in an uncertain future. Connor plays a younger man who doesn’t know much about the female sex, while Mack’s character is old enough to understand what’s missing. The pair meet through their phones on some kind of government app created to bring men together for company and conversation. Despite their best efforts, they find a route to companionship clouded by both the absence of women and the hidden reasons behind this odd scenario.

Sarah Polley’s current film Women Talking explores this similar notion of a world where women desert men en masse. Carr’s play is a more gentle proposition, as the two men’s struggle to make connections sparks some gentle humour albeit with dark undercurrents. Until It’s Gone is a solid start to the new season. While short on physical craftsmanship, the confident performances and acerbic, locally attuned writing make this play worthy of attention, with a surprisingly emotional pay-off. The fault line between men and women is a hot topic right now, and Until It’s Gone explores issues of male responsibility in a sharp, often profound way. (Eddie Harrison)

 Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, until Saturday 4 March; reviewed at Òran Mór, Glasgow.

the month

It’s not an overstatement to say that Janey Godley helped the people of Scotland survive the pandemic. At a time when laughs were thin on the ground, and each government announcement was met with trepidation, one upside began to emerge: if Nicola Sturgeon was at the podium, it meant a voiceover from Godley wasn’t far behind. Instead of lockdowns, closed pubs and not seeing your grandma, we’d hear ‘Nicola’ talk about soup pots, baked potatoes and meeting up with ‘the Sandras’.

All of which gave Janey a nook in our hearts and, if the audience response at Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre is anything to go by, she’s still tucked right in there. The outpouring of love as she walks onto the stage is topped only by a tidal wave that greets her closing gambit: a singalong about triumphing over adversity, something Godley is more than familiar with. From growing up in abject poverty with an abusive uncle, to her murdered mother and more recent cancer diagnosis, the Glaswegian comic is open about the traumas she’s faced. And although all of them get a brief mention here, they serve only to swell empathy and love in the room rather than place Godley as any kind of receptacle for pity.

Despite the show’s title of Not Dead Yet, cancer barely gets an airing, aside from a brutally honest take on what her ‘fanny’ has endured over the past few years (a lot). Instead, we’re regaled with hilarious stories of the night she met a music industry giant, the day her

mammy took a head teacher down a peg or two, and an affectionate poke at life with an autistic husband and daughter.

Speaking of which, Ashley Storrie produces a mighty set of her own, supporting her mum and proving she is every inch a chip off the old block. Both women own the difficulties they’ve faced, turning each life challenge into a vehicle for laughter. With Storrie, a trip to Sainsbury’s to buy fags becomes a saga, while Godley recalls the day her wee girl ‘assisted’ with a pregnancy test. Nothing is too rude or off limits, but neither is any of their material gratuitous.

Of course, all those in attendance who found Godley on Twitter during the pandemic are longing for her to pull on a voiceover hat and make good use of the large video screen centre-stage: she doesn’t disappoint. Short videos of animal babies misbehaving, expertly voiced live, have us doubled over with laughter. Godley also knows exactly how to put the boot in and which politicians are worthy of a kicking. With Sturgeon’s departure, we may not hear that hallowed phrase ‘Frank, get the door!’ anymore, but long may this show’s title remain true. Because the world would be a far poorer place without Janey Godley in it.

Janey Godley: Not Dead Yet, Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh, Friday 3 & Saturday 4 March; SEC, Glasgow, Sunday 5 March; reviewed at Festival Theatre, Edinburgh.

comedy

FILM CLOSE (Directed by Lukas Dhont) 

The nature of a friendship is called devastatingly into question in this ravishing coming-of-ager from Belgian director Lukas Dhont (Girl). Young newcomers Eden Dambrine and Gustav De Waele mark themselves out as stars of the future playing two boys enjoying an unashamedly adoring friendship. We watch this pair frolic, laugh and snuggle, before the brutality of the playground, and rigid notions about what boys can be, shames them into separation.

Dambrine is Léo, the piece’s 13-year-old protagonist. He’s more alive to peer pressure than the sweet and musical Rémi (De Waele) and, it turns out, more ruthless. There’s fine work from Émilie Dequenne and Léa Drucker as the boys’ mothers but those young stars steal the show with the unaffected authenticity and tenderness of their performances.

Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes 2022 and now Oscar-nominated for Best International Feature, Close is sometimes gobsmackingly gorgeous. It’s performed and shot with striking sensitivity and while the film mines the twisting of the boys’ innocence for tragedy, it also hints at fledgling, more adult feelings. Close sucks you in with loving looks and sun-kissed fields of flowers before things take a darker turn. (Emma Simmonds)

 In cinemas from Friday 3 March; on MUBI from Friday 21 April.

ART LINDSAY ANDERSON ARCHIVE Never Apologise 

Lindsay Anderson’s status as Britain’s great outsider filmmaker behind works such as O Lucky Man!, If . . . and Britannia Hospital, has long seen the anti-establishment auteur championed by the University Of Stirling, which holds his considerable archive. To mark the centenary of Anderson’s birth, the life and work of the self-styled anarchist is celebrated in this exhibition, showing rarely seen production stills, theatre programmes, press cuttings and writings, with each section punctuated by written commentary from key collaborators. Anderson’s stage work at the Royal Court is acknowledged alongside his films, while his contribution to television is marked via angry broadsides from columnists outraged by his radical production of Alan Bennett’s play, The Old Crowd (1979). There are images too from The Whales Of August (1987), Anderson’s final feature prior to his death in 1994. This brought together veteran Hollywood stars Lillian Gish and Bette Davis in an elegiac swansong for all involved. Artist Stephen Sutcliffe contributes two blown-up publicity images of Arthur Lowe and Christine Noonan from his 2007 Anderson-inspired exhibition at Stirling’s Changing Room gallery.

One of the most fascinating images on show is of Anderson flanked by George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley after he was hired to film Wham!’s 1985 tour of China, the first by any western band since the Cultural Revolution. Anderson’s unseen cut of that film had him removed from the project as outlined in a glorious litany of defiance shown here. A photograph of that incongruous trio is the perfect illustration of that decade’s contradictions, with the worlds of commerce, art and public relations colliding. As Anderson wrote, however, ‘no art is worth much that doesn’t seek to change the world.’ (Neil Cooper)

 Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling, until Sunday 30 April.

PICTURE: JOHN HAYNES

GOD’S CREATURES (Directed by Saela Davis & Anna Rose Holmer)

lllll

As bleak and slow as a week in prison, this oedipal thriller is a very deliberate trawl through a tide of inhumanity. In a remote Irish fishing village, Aileen (Emily Watson) divides her days between shifts as a manager at the local seafood packing plant, her daughter (Toni O’Rourke), a new grandson, and friends Sarah (Aisling Franciosi) and Mary (Marion O’Dwyer). When Mary’s son dies at sea, Aileen’s estranged but still prodigal son Brian (Paul Mescal) appears at the wake. Vague and cagey about his abandoned life in Australia, his return eventually unties any pretence of close-knit communality. But will Aileen be able to see beyond the love she feels for her only son? Based on a story by Irish producer Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly and writer Shane Crowley, this raw naturalistic drama bears the tropes (miserable patriarchies, cruel unstable economies, humanity dispossessed by poverty, and austere faiths) of other grinding gothic exercises in modern social realism.

These have best been exemplified by the likes of Shane Meadows, the Dardenne brothers, Pawel Pawlikowski, Lynne Ramsay and Joanna Hogg. Ultimately, however, this is Watson and Mescal’s film, the latter in particular modulating and invoking the inky heart of this dark tale. (Paul Dale) n GFT, Glasgow, Thursday 2 & Friday 3 March; in cinemas from Friday 31 March.

RYE LANE (Directed by Raine Allen Miller) lllll

The meet-cute in this delightful and laugh-out-loud romantic comedy occurs in the toilet stalls of an art gallery. Dom (David Jonsson) is crying over his ex-girlfriend when Yas (Vivian Oparah) enters and has a loud wee. She’s forthright and funny, and he’s slightly taken aback. It’s a great introduction to these charming lead characters who help each other over heartbreak on a lively stroll round south London from Peckham to Brixton and beyond.

The screenplay, co-written by Nathan Bryon and Tom Melia, takes its lead from Before Sunrise, but knowingly winks to many classics along the way, including Love Actually and When Harry Met Sally. Director Raine Allen Miller creatively plays with form, switching between ultrawide angles that reveal a bustling metropolis, to more intimate iPhone chats. The colour palette and clothes pop with greens and yellows of the Jamaican flag, while pink and blue filters swathe the characters in moody lighting.

Miller sets a spirited rhythm to match the energy of Yas and Dom; as they wander round the manor, songs by Stormzy, A Tribe Called Quest and Salt-N-Pepa play them along their way. Jonsson and Oparah share great chemistry, making the couple’s dynamic both heady and exciting. There’s so much to enjoy in just observing as their dares and mischief play out, taking each other far from their comfort zones and possibly falling head over heels in love there. Stops at a house party, markets and restaurants are married with multiple surprising cameos.

Though the film does follow a formula, it pleasingly adjusts its settings for a modern audience. Yas and Dom get up to equally embarrassing hijinks, and both characters have been written with enough flaws and warmth that they feel real. Just like a dream date, Rye Lane has a great sense of humour, heaps of heart and is extremely good looking.

(Katherine McLaughlin)

n GFT, Glasgow, Sunday 12 March; in cinemas from Friday 17 March.

BAND (Directed by Álfrún Örnólfsdóttir) lllll

The realisation that life is slipping through your fingers comes to us all. Such is the driving force behind Band, an Icelandic mockumentary from first-time director Álfrún Örnólfsdóttir. Three women approaching middle age have all been broadly successful in Iceland’s art world, while continuing their teenage group, The Post Performance Blues Band, long past its sellby date. Feeling as though they’re at a ‘now or nothing’ juncture in life, the trio decide to focus their energies on music full-time for a year.

Naturally, there are obstacles to their progress. Their music is empirically awful and saddled with a performance style which emanates a try-hard art-school stink, while their many family and professional commitments make infiltrating the pop scene a near impossibility. It’s certainly a strong premise for a film and one that, in its occasionally smart skewering of Iceland’s art-pop scene, manages a few laughs.

While well-performed by its leads (Örnólfsdóttir among them, always pitching a fine line between desperation and the unshakeable belief that the big time is just around the corner), the film quickly becomes both overstuffed and underdeveloped, cramming in superfluous character details without ever giving them room to breathe. There’s a severe lack of form in Band, a structural problem made worse by repetitive plot points, clunky storytelling and a confusion as to whether this is a mockumentary, a biting satire of the Icelandic art world, a slice-of-life drama, or a paean to the joy of following your dreams no matter the cost.

Character arcs come and go, plot points are either dispensed with overly hastily or pored over with extraneous expository detail, and the band’s absurd live performances (by far the film’s best moments) are done all too quickly. Much like the characters it’s depicting, then, Band is never quite sure what it wants to be. (Kevin Fullerton)

n CCA, Wednesday 8 & Thursday 9 March.

glasgow film festival

THE NIGHT OF THE 12TH (Directed by Dominik Moll) lllll

Inspired by a little-known murder that took place just outside of Paris, Dominik Moll’s superior police procedural brings to mind David Fincher’s masterpiece Zodiac for daring to dramatise an unsolved case. A gruesome killing that eluded French police for years, the film reveals as much in an opening caption. While this might frustrate some, it shouldn’t as this is arguably Moll’s best film since his 2000 breakthrough Harry, He’s Here To Help. It’s a story that’s not so much interested in tracking down the killer, but in the effect a years-long investigation has on those involved.

Shifting its action from Paris to the mountainous region of Grenoble, the story begins with a brutal killing, as teenager Clara (Lula Cotton Frapier) is attacked by an unseen assailant who sets her ablaze. On the case are Yohan (Bastien Bouillon) and the older Marceau (Bouli Lanners), two cops with very different approaches to policing.

As the pair interview various men who slept with Clara, the film subtly deals with the way women are (wrongly) seen as inciting aggressive behaviour in men. It’s certainly a dynamite way of exploring the male/female dynamic in the 21st century. As long as you don’t expect a firm conclusion, you’ll be hooked. (James Mottram)

n Cineworld, Saturday 11 March; GFT, Sunday 12 March; in cinemas from Friday 31 March.

Dungeons

OTHER THINGS WORTH GOING OUT FOR

If you fancy getting out and about this month, there’s plenty culture to sample such as a weekend dabble in experimentation, an exhibition revolving around plants, and a festival of silent movies

ART

KEG DE SOUZA

This Australian artist brings her rst major solo exhibition to the UK with Shipping Roots concerning the stories of lesser-known plants and their impact on climate and politics.

 Climate House, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Friday 24 March–Sunday 27 August.

COMEDY

FIN TAYLOR

A stand-up provocateur with a magical ability to nail punchlines to the wall, Taylor delivers his Daddy Self-Care show which is likely to enthral and appal in equal measure.

 The Stand, Edinburgh, Wednesday 1 March; The Stand, Glasgow, Thursday 2 March.

FILM

ELECTRIC MALADY

Namechecked in Ariana DeBose’s room-splitting rap at the BAFTAs, Marie Liden’s documentary tracks the phenomenon of electrosensitivity, a condition which the director’s own mother suffered from.

 In cinemas from Friday 3 March.

HIPPFEST

The silent lm festival returns with more movies to shout about, including opening piece The Blue Bird (pictured), a fantasy fairytale about two children’s quest for happiness which has distinct Wizard Of Oz echoes. Other treats include Master Of The House and The Silent Enemy

 Hippodrome Cinema, Bo’ness, Wednesday 22–Sunday 26 March.

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS:

HONOR AMONG THIEVES

Based on the iconic tabletop game, this actionadventure romp stars Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page and Hugh Grant, as a group of thieves aim to stop a terrible fate for the world.

 In cinemas from Friday 31 March.

MUSIC

LIZZO

Fresh from her somewhat eye-catching turn at the BRITs, Lizzo is joined by support act Joy Crookes for a touring show on the back of the headliner’s 2022 Special album.

 OVO Hydro, Glasgow, Wednesday 8 March.

TAE SUP

Horse, Finn Anderson and Me For Queen join James Yorkston for the rst of a new series of Tae Sups with music and storytelling at its heart.

 Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Saturday 18 March.

ORBITAL

The Hartnoll siblings bring techno and rhythm to their adoring masses.

 SWG3, Glasgow, Tuesday 28 March.

THEATRE

SHERIFF DICK’S SWAN SONG

Creative Citizens return to Tramway with this piece about a single day at Glasgow Sheriff Court, featuring performers who come from a variety of recovery and community projects across the city.

 Tramway, Glasgow, Thursday 2–Saturday 4 March.

BUZZCUT

A weekend of experimental performance hits Glasgow featuring Suzi Cunningham, Sasha Ballon (pictured) and CLAY AD.

 Tramway & CCA, Glasgow, Thursday 30 March–Saturday 1 April.

& Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (and bottom from left), BUZZCUT, HippFest, Electric Malady

PICTURE: COURTESY OF GEORGE EASTMAN MUSEUM

staying in

AGENT ELVIS

Let’s face it, only Matthew McConaughey could realistically get away with this. The star of classics such as True Detective, Mud and Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past lends his southern drawl to an animated comedy which has The King Of Rock & Roll transforming into a super-spy, karate-kicking the forces of darkness and whatnot. ‘From the time Elvis was a young boy, he always dreamed of being the superhero fighting crime and saving the world! This lets him do just that.’ Words spoken not by some jumped-up, jump-suited studio lackey, but by the co-creator of this series: one Priscilla Presley . . . (Brian Donaldson)

n Available on Netflix from Friday 17 March.

PACE SETTERS

Malcom Middleton thought he was too long in the tooth to start a new band. Fiona Shepherd discovers why he was wrong, as the Arab Strap stalwart gears up to

Malcolm Middleton is best known and loved for his old(er) band Arab Strap, currently enjoying their second go on the swings. But even as they released their 2021 comeback album, As Days Get Dark, Middleton was seeing other musicians: one other in particular. Joel Harries, Northampton-bred and now Manchester-based, has recorded as a solo artist and as one half of Team Leader with his partner Quincey Brown. A chance meeting with Middleton on his adopted home patch in the East Neuk of Fife has ultimately led to their collaboration as Lichen Slow.

‘We clicked with musical tastes and decided we would try writing some music together,’ says Middleton. ‘No plan, no expectations, let’s see if it works.’ The ideas started flowing remotely from their respective bases in early 2020 and continued seamlessly as the world went into lockdown; so seamlessly that their no-pressure sessions yielded a full album of songs, Rest Lurks

Harries acknowledges that ‘if we’d been in a studio together, we’d probably have made a pretty different record,’ but Middleton was in his creative comfort zone. ‘Living in a small fishing village on the east coast of Scotland . . . it’s the way I work with other people anyway,’ he says. ‘This is probably just me being anti-social and not confident as a musician, but you are allowed space to get your stuff to a point where you’re happy to let someone else hear it. You’re never sending over thrown-down rubbish; it’s always thought out.’

The pair provided each other with artistic food for thought. ‘My music’s quite simplistic,’ reckons Middleton, ‘so it stretched me just to work along with his songwriting. Joel’s voice is really unique and, apart from his production skills, his guitar playing is very different from mine so a lot of the time I was trying to work out what the timing was in a certain piece before I could sing along or put some music to it.’

For Harries, the experience brought a different shade to songs he had written. ‘It expanded my vision of what I was capable of within the scope of one record. I would normally find a sound I like and do a lot of things in that realm, but the album is really diverse. That is in large part down to Malcolm’s influence on the writing and general feel of the songs.’ Work has already commenced on a follow-up but, for now, the duo are facing another frontier: how to reproduce their mood music together for a live audience. ‘We’ve only ever been in the same room three times,’ says Harries. ‘But it came together really fast. I’m excited to be playing it out.’

 Rest Lurks is released by Rock Action on Friday 10 March; Lichen Slow play The Hug And Pint, Glasgow, on Friday 28 April.

BINGE FEST

Our alphabetical column on viewing marathons reaches N

Based on Peter Moffat’s Criminal Justice from 2008, the rather awkwardly titled The Night Of (NOW) was the acclaimed US remake of 2016. The story of a man who wakes up to find his boozy one-night stand murdered but is unable to piece together the evening’s events in his head, its taut eight episodes brought deserved attention upon Riz Ahmed’s talents and secured universal love for John Turturro who played his eccentric lawyer.

Criminal Justice starred Ben Whishaw, who also crops up in Nathan Barley (All 4), an early 2000s satire on I-D-style mags and the still infant digital universe. Co-created by Chris Morris, who was still surfing the Brass Eye wave of notoriety, and Charlie Brooker for whom Black Mirror was yet half a decade away, the six episodes were, admittedly, largely despised. But they’re well worth a revisit to see what Julian Barratt, Richard Ayoade and Noel Fielding were up to round about then. (Brian Donaldson)

 Other N binges: The Newsroom (NOW), Nighty Night (BBC iPlayer), Nashville (All 4).

present his latest venture, Lichen Slow

GAME

GAME ON

In an epic ideological struggle between capitalism and communism, the true battle over classic computer game Tetris is little known. As director Jon S Baird brings this curious tale to the small screen, he tells James Mottram what drew him to that story and reveals his joy at using Aberdeen as a double for Moscow

With coloured bricks jigsawing their way down the screen, Tetris is unquestionably one of the most iconic video games of all time. Simple, fiendish and, in short, a work of pixelated genius. But it wasn’t this that first drew in Scottish filmmaker Jon S Baird (Filth, Stan & Ollie) to its backstory. ‘I wasn’t a huge gamer,’ he admits, when we speak over Zoom. Rather, he was taken by a true tale that takes place behind the Iron Curtain in the late 80s. ‘I was very much interested in the Cold War thriller aspect of the story.’

A former politics student, Baird was hooked when he read Noah Pink’s script for Tetris, which covers less the creation of that game (by a Russian computer wizard) and more the fight for international rights to distribute it. Various parties compete, including late newspaper baron Robert Maxwell (played by Roger Allam under remarkable prosthetics) and go-getting American businessman Henk Rogers (Taron Egerton) who convinces Nintendo to nab Tetris for the launch of its soon-to-be-huge hand-held Game Boy console.

With Henk betting all his chips on pulling the deal off, what really stuns is how he heads to Moscow, without paperwork or permissions, to negotiate with the Soviet authorities as communism meets capitalism head on. ‘I don’t think Henk is scared of anybody,’ says Baird. ‘You meet him as a real person and you understand why he could do this because that’s who he is. He’s really a guy who backs himself and puts himself forward. I think he’s got so much self-belief.’

The same could be said for Taron Egerton, who shot to fame in the Kingsman film series and then wowed audiences as Elton John in Rocketman. Baird, who had been working on a script for a yet-to-be-made Kingsman sequel before pivoting to Tetris, immediately felt Egerton was right for Henk. ‘I was a big fan of his, of Rocketman especially. I like how much energy he puts into performance. And I think you just needed that with Henk. He had to be on the whole time.’

While Henk is the story’s hero, there’s no question that Maxwell is the ‘literally larger-than-life villain’. The film touches on Maxwell’s financial irregularities, swindling millions from his companies’ pension funds before his mysterious death in 1991. ‘That’s the thing that really brought them down,’ says Baird. ‘I think we could have gone harder on Maxwell to be honest.’

Shooting during covid, Baird couldn’t film in Eastern Europe but found an elegant solution. ‘The University Of Aberdeen, where I went, has got some incredible brutalist buildings,’ he explains. The college’s zoology centre, in particular, provided some key exteriors, although the acid test came when Baird hired several Russian theatre actors to play secondary roles. ‘One of the great things was when you took the Russians onto sets that were supposed to be Moscow and watch them go “OK, wow, that feels like home”.’

After a career that’s seen him bounce between directing film and TV, including the Martin Scorsese-produced Vinyl and recent ITV drama Stonehouse, Baird was simply delighted to give his former home a well-deserved close-up. ‘Aberdeen hasn’t really been used as a film location. It was great to go back up there and put it on the map because they’d never really had a big movie up there.’ Now it’ll forever be associated with Tetris, a game that Baird has unsurprisingly become more fond of these past two years. ‘I play it on my iPhone,’ he admits. ‘I’m kind of addicted to it!’

first writes

In this Q&A, we throw some questions about ‘firsts’ at debut authors. For March, we feature Cecile Pin, author of Wandering Souls, which follows three siblings as they flee war-torn Vietnam and end up in Thatcher’s Britain, another place that doesn’t seem to want them

What’s the first book you remember reading as a child? A French picture book called Roule Galette by Pierre Belvès and Natha Caputo. It’s about a cake that gets bored while cooling down so escapes through the kitchen window and encounters all kinds of mischief. It’s one of those books that every French person seems to have a vague memory of reading as a child.

What was the book you read that made you decide to be a writer?

If I had to pick one, it would probably be Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. It’s one of the first books I remember that stayed with me long after I’d finished the last page, and that made me want to do the same with my words.

What’s your favourite first line in a book? It’s a classic, but the first line from One Hundred Years Of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez: ‘Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.’ It introduces the setting and main character, a sentimental childhood memory, drama, intrigue . . . so much in such a concise and neat first sentence.

Which debut publication had the most profound effect on you?

Besides Things Fall Apart, I owe a lot to Ocean Vuong’s first novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (though he had published poetry before that). It gave me more confidence in the story I wanted to tell with Wandering Souls and writing in my second language.

What’s the first thing you do when you wake up on a writing day? Check my phone and have coffee.

What’s the first thing you do when you’ve stopped writing for the day? It depends; probably either see some friends, read, go to the gym, or run errands (I don’t have a very exciting life).

In a parallel universe where you’re the tyrant leader of a dystopian civilisation, what’s the first book you’d burn? I really hope there are no parallel universes in which that’s the case! Maybe Infinite Jest [by David Foster Wallace], so I can stop pretending I’ll ever get around to reading it . . . I get intimidated by long books.

What’s the first piece of advice you’d offer to an aspiring novelist? To read a lot and to read broadly. And also don’t listen to too many pieces of advice: take the time to find out what works best for you.

Wandering Souls is published by 4th Estate on Thursday 2 March.

GAMES RESIDENT EVIL 4

By the time Resident Evil 4 was released in 2005, there had actually been 12 games in the series, including various longforgotten spin-offs and a remake. Shinji Mikami’s stagnant survival horror series desperately needed a shot in the arm, and it got exactly that when Resident Evil 4 shifted the series’ fixed-camera perspective to a view over the player’s shoulder. The Last Of Us, God Of War and Mass Effect are just a few of the games influenced by that momentous decision.

Considering its protracted lineage, it’s perhaps fitting that there have been numerous remakes of Resident Evil 4 itself, including an HD remaster and a slightly truncated version in VR. Now, following the extraordinary success of the Resident Evil 2 remake from 2019, it’s time to return once more to rural Spain and face down the hordes of angry villagers and assorted monsters.

Unlike 2011’s remaster, this is a full remake with new gameplay mechanics, vastly improved graphics and a revamped story. It could really benefit from some tinkering (that ground-breaking camera was locked far too close to the protagonist and it’s a notoriously tough game), so this should, hopefully, finally be the definitive edition of a modern masterpiece. (Murray Robertson)

 Released on PS4, PS5, PC and Xbox Series X/S on Friday 24 March.

ALBUMS DEPECHE MODE

The last time Depeche Mode were together as a trio, they were gathered in 2020 on Zoom, remotely accepting their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. As Andrew Fletcher and Martin Gore beamed, Dave Gahan thanked the fans, managers and ‘promoters across the world, who took a chance on outsider eyeliner-wearing weirdos from Essex’. It was an overdue accolade for these early adopters of synthesiser technology who were true innovators through the 1980s and 90s.

Two years later, Gahan and Gore were in the studio writing new music when they received news that Fletcher had passed away after suffering an aortic dissection. Fletcher was due to join his bandmates and offer feedback on the songs they had written. In the end, he never heard any of them. Yet his presence can still be felt throughout Depeche Mode’s forthcoming album, Memento Mori, their first in five years, where Gahan and Gore come to terms with personal grief and life in a post-pandemic world.

Their first single, ‘Ghosts Again’, is a sparkling, melancholic number that references the fleetingness of life and how we make the best of it; a theme that crops up repeatedly. ‘Remember that you must die, so what you do here today . . . you’ve got to embrace it,’ Gahan told NME in an interview. ‘Coming out of the pandemic I was going “what do I even want to do with my life?” That’s the existential question that a lot of people have been asking themselves. I certainly have a lot over the last few years. But here I am again. I dived in.’ (Becca Inglis)

 Memento Mori is released by Columbia Records on Friday 24 March.

In this column, we ask a pod person about the ‘casts that mean a lot to them. This time around, it’s Damian Kerlin whose Memories From The Dancefloor uncovers the wild stories and forgotten history of queer nightlife across Britain

my perfect podcast

Which podcast educates you? Emma Gannon’s Ctrl, Alt, Delete was an interviewpodcast blueprint. But instead of relying on celebrities or big talent, Emma spoke to people who genuinely inspired and interested her. It makes the whole experience really authentic and, like most of us when talking to people we admire, you can hear that ‘OH MY GOD, I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M SPEAKING TO YOU!’ in Emma’s voice.

Which podcast makes you laugh? It has to be I’m Grand Mam which is the perfect example of how to get humour right in audio. Nothing feels forced in this conversation between two best friends. But instead of it being about them, it’s about their reaction to the world around them. Ego in podcasting is rife and it turns me right off. I’m Grand Mam has hit the balance perfectly and their nuanced approach is why it is laugh-out-loud good. They are also Irish, but I’m not biased.

Which podcast makes you sad or angry? A Positive Life: HIV From Terrence Higgins To Today is a beautifully crafted piece of audio. It takes you on the journey, which is so harrowing but breathes joy when you reminisce on how far we have come and what we’ve achieved as a community. But my god, our Tory government has a lot to answer for!

Is there a podcast you’d describe as a guilty pleasure? Dish with Nick Grimshaw and Michelin-star chef Angela Hartnett. I love food. Nothing makes me happier than great company and good food, and this podcast covers both. The relationship between Nick and Angela is so heart-warming, having struck up a great friendship through a shared passion. I dare not try to cook any of it though. If it can’t be cooked at gas mark six for 20 minutes, you’re not having it!

Who doesn’t have a podcast but should? Doesn’t everyone have one now? I’m a little bit bored of the guest-interview format. I’m a sucker for a narrative; it’s the writer in me. I want more podcasts that take me on a journey (there we are with that ‘journey’ again) which tells a story and challenges my thinking. I want that lightbulb moment. I adored Pandora Sykes’ Unreal: A Critical History Of Reality TV. Storytelling at its finest.

Can you pitch us a new podcast in exactly 20 words?

Uncovering the lasting trauma of the LGBTQ+ community, having grown up during the troubles in Northern Ireland to today: you heard it here first folks!

Memories From The Dance oor is hosted by Acast.

book of the month

Neither an introduction to contemporary feminism nor a complicated dissection of the subject, Eilidh Akilade finds this rallying cry from South America akin to a manifesto that is both forceful and hopeful

S‘ubversion dipped in beauty is revolution’, declares LASTESIS with Set Fear On Fire. This poignant proclamation from the Chilean performance collective is a feminist call to, and from, women across South America. Unpacking the violent misogyny that underpins women’s everyday lives, their manifesto leaves readers with as much hope as it does anger.

Chapters begin with excerpts from the group’s previously performed works, reminding readers that all art can be (and is) a form of resistance. The entire book is text as performance in the least pretentious way. It’s not forced, and the ‘performance’ doesn’t rely on external material, whether visual or sound-based. Set Fear On Fire is both its own powerful thing and part of something wider.

There’s a beauty to the chorus of it. Opening with ‘Us’, a collaborative ‘we’ is called upon from the offset. LASTESIS talk as one while pulling in other women’s voices and narratives, platforming a collectivity and community with a distinct respect for the individual: it’s hopeful to witness.

And such expansiveness reaches into its audience, too. While it’s neither an introductory feminism lesson nor an impossibly complex dissection on the matter, there’s something for us all here. In a glossary entitled ‘Brief Conceptual Notes Before We Proceed’, LASTESIS establish key definitions used throughout which acts as a much-needed welcome into the text. From here on in, there’s a sense that this is a text that wants you to get it; to access it and all its inner workings. This shouldn’t feel revolutionary, and yet it does.

brevity

Humming with rage, its central arguments become almost chant-like, their predictability a comfort rather than a bore. And, of course, in many ways nothing all that new is being said here; however, its attention to the patterns of our everyday and the ease with which it dismantles mechanisms of misogyny are invaluable in approaching contemporary feminism. Women’s stories are interwoven without the usual clinical undertones of case studies; a feat to witness in itself. Similarly, its brevity feels political: this is a slim little book to be slipped into back pockets for the moments between caretaking, working and patriarchy.

There are instances where chapters feel confused, the stated subject matter wandering into something entirely different. But these slippages are worth it for each feminist teaching we pick up on the way. There are few commands; a collective will is roused through sharing knowledge, understanding and experiences, rather than dictation. In many ways, it’s a forceful text; in others, there’s a real grace to the gentleness with which it takes us.

Set Fear On Fire is published by Verso on Tuesday 7 March.

ALBUMS SLOWTHAI Ugly (Method Records) 

As a master of self-publicity and dodgy guest spots on other people’s songs, it’s easy to forget that slowthai’s albums have so far been impressive in their wit and musical dexterity, balancing personal angst with broader social issues. Ugly, a series of caricatured broadsides on mental health, attempts to continue this trajectory, but instead becomes an act of woe-is-me self-indulgence.

Ugly is an apt title. This is self-lacerating stuff which refuses to make excuses for its creator’s chaotic behaviour. But even when playing to his strengths, the Mercury nominee relies too readily on cliché to emphasise his mental decline. ‘OK to cry,’ he exclaims on ‘HAPPY’; ‘the world is ugly’ he tells us on ‘UGLY’; or ‘I feel like I’m falling’ on the interminable racket ‘Falling’. These vapid sentiments of the ‘it’s OK to not be OK’ variety try too hard to make complex situations radio-friendly.

Big emotions will always tread a thin line between dramatic profundity and ropy teenage poetry. Slowthai doesn’t fall into the latter category, but he never quite reaches the former either. Despite some enjoyable musical touches (the pulsing paranoiac beat of album opener ‘Yum’ is particularly excellent), this descent into darkness is an inessential work from an interesting voice. (Kevin Fullerton)

 Released on Friday 3 March.

BOOKS ELEANOR CATTON Birnam Wood (Granta) 

After the whopping success of Eleanor Catton’s 2013 Booker Prize-winning novel, The Luminaries, the author has confessed to feeling considerable pressure to hit similar heights with her latest offering. And while the two storylines could not be more different, it’s safe to say that, as with The Luminaries, TV (and potentially film) companies will be queuing up to secure the rights to Birnam Wood. This gripping thriller has ‘screen adaptation’ written all over it, flipping easily from page-turning to binge-watching.

Set in 2017, in a fictional national park on New Zealand’s South Island, Birnam Wood has no direct link to Shakespeare’s ‘Scottish play’ from which its name originates (although the perils of anyone amassing too much power are certainly writ large). Instead, it refers to a guerrilla gardening group that ‘borrows’ and cultivates land around Christchurch to grow fruit and vegetables. When they discover some potentially fertile soil is going to waste five hours’ drive away, in the small town of Thorndike, it seems like an opportunity that’s too good to miss. Especially when American billionaire Robert Lemoine enters the fray, offering to fund the povertystricken group.

Catton does an incredible job of commanding our attention; first, by building the novel’s foundations with squabbling and failed romance within the gardening collective, and then by ramping up intrigue once they decamp to Thorndike. If there’s a small irk, it’s the whiff of beard-stroking Bond villain about Lemoine that detracts ever so slightly from the story’s believability.

Otherwise, this tale of environmental do-gooders versus big business, with all the complexities both sides of that political divide bring to the party, feels very on message. Thrilling plotline aside, Catton is also masterful at description and dialogue, providing enough detail to project images in our mind but never straying into unnecessary exposition. Prepare to push all other concerns aside until you reach the end.

(Kelly

Apter)

 Published on Thursday 2 March.

a life less ordinary

Almost 70 years after her death, the real Frida Kahlo remains largely unknowable. Paul Dale examines a new documentary series and graphic novel which both offer fresh insight into this legendary figure

Mexican painter and self-perpetuating icon Frida Kahlo is long overdue a definitive account of her short but extraordinary life. All the documentaries and biopics from the last 30 years have either mythologised or victimised her in a way it would be difficult to imagine happening to a male artist.

Becoming Frida Kahlo () is Louise Lockwood’s ravishing and revealing new BBC series which gives Kahlo’s story the treatment it deserves. Over three chunky episodes, it reveals her emergence, emotional breaking (through love and loss) and final artistic ascent. With access to incredible archive footage (some previously unseen) and an acutely wellchosen range of talking heads (relatives of friends and lovers, Mexican art historians and scholars), Becoming Frida Kahlo platforms the wonder, insight and madness so frequently at the heart of her work.

Crippled in a road accident as a teenager and in constant pain, Kahlo became her own muse because, in her words, it was the subject she knew best. In his 1991 book Cultural Icons, critic James Park summed it up when he wrote: ‘with her glare, her moustache and her unlikely handlebar eyebrows, she was her own religious subject; exotic and dynamically unsettling in an over-ripe world of pain, jungle fantasy and Mexican folkloric arcana.’ But Kahlo’s life and art was also defined by

her relationship with that other titan of Mexican art, Diego Rivera. This dynamic is picked apart and examined here to reveal some disturbing and possibly revelatory unknown truths.

The latest in publisher SelfMadeHero’s Art Masters series of graphicnovel biographies is also about this proto-feminist Latina goddess who counted Georgia O’Keeffe, Trotsky, Picasso and André Breton among her friendsandlovers.SubtitledHerLife,HerWork,HerHome(),Francisco De La Mora’s beautifully produced book begins on Kahlo’s 47th birthday at her blue-house home (now the Frida Kahlo Museum) in Coyoacán.

Kahlo chooses this occasion to tell her life story. It stretches from a comfortable childhood to rebellious schooldays, her accident, failed loves, finding her voice through art, and the initial contact and connection she made with the womanising Rivera, who was nevertheless supportive of both Kahlo and her art. Miscarriages and affairs are touched on, but this is very much a celebration of a life and reflection of the beauty she brought to our world. It’s there in all its tragedy and loss.

Becoming Frida Kahlo starts on BBC Two, Friday 10 March; Frida Kahlo: Her Life, Her Work, Her Home is published by SelfMadeHero on Thursday 16 March.

ALBUMS SANDRAYATI Safe Ground (Decca Records) 

The notion of home is often hinted at in folk music. For Indonesian singer-songwriter Sandrayati, this is less a notion and more a guiding principle as she weaves music about the power of culture, community and identity. Born into a Filipino American family, she travelled around as a child while her parents fought for the rights of indigenous people. Her debut collection Safe Ground, produced by Grammy-nominated composer Ólafur Arnalds, is a largely beautiful and poignant record that fits in to the current folk tradition in popular music.

Although Sandrayati’s voice harkens to a classic American folk sound, the inclusion of Indonesian songs opens the album beyond borders. ‘Suara Dunia’, a calming ode to the Mollo people from East Indonesia that repeats a native mantra over gently plucked guitar, is an early stand-out. Lyrically, Sandrayati walks a tightrope between convincing spirituality and mawkishness, but the delicate and nuanced strings work alongside her beguiling, sometimes haunting melodies, to keep things interesting. Throughout this record, the instrumentation is largely unintrusive, gently billowing underneath Sandrayati’s captivating voice. It is almost a shame when, like on the track ‘Smoke’, the music swells and shatters an over-riding mood that has otherwise been conjured.

Taken as a whole, the album has a strong sense of personality, and the warmth in which Sandrayati sings about her subjects is felt throughout. The messages around place, community and identity permeate every note of it, giving Safe Ground a complete feel. Admittedly, it can at times lose the listener’s attention as some songs struggle to stand alone. For the most part, though, it is a stunning debut and a tender invitation to a new kind of home.

(Sean Greenhorn)

 Released on Friday 17 March.

TV DAISY JONES & THE SIX (Prime Video) 

Rock’s rich tapestry is mythologised one more time in Prime’s new mini-series adapted from Taylor Jenkins Reid’s best-selling novel. Following the rise and fall of a fictitious 1970s stadium-sized band that gives the show its title, the ten episodes are driven by a fractious relationship between bandleader Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin) and his vocal foil and reluctant songwriting partner Daisy Jones (Riley Keough).

A substance-fuelled soap opera follows, which charts the kind of incestuous inter-band chemistry, intimate excesses and self-destructive largesse that have become as familiar in music-biz fiction as in the real-life crash and burn Greek tragedies it imitates. Daisy Jones & The Six is framed as a 20thanniversary documentary that allows the straight-to-camera narration to emulate the book’s oral history style.

With a largely female writing team on board (plus Reese Witherspoon as executive producer and alt-rock royalty Kim Gordon a creative consultant), the music industry’s inherent misogyny is laid bare. This is witnessed both in the sexually charged dynamic between Daisy and Billy, and in the travails of Nabiyah Be’s would-be disco diva Simone. Watched over by Tom Wright’s sage-like record producer Teddy Price, an easy-on-the-ear soundtrack of soft-rock originals by Blake Mills seals the deal on this show’s baby boomer appeal.

(Neil Cooper)

 Episodes available from Friday 3 March.

PODCASTS LOVE, JANESSA (BBC/CBC) 

If further proof was needed that humans can’t be trusted with nice things like the internet, it’s all there in ‘catfishing’. The practice of deceiving someone by using the internet’s capacity for identity theft to con them into a romantic relationship (or more often out of money) is so common that it’s spawned a whole genre of documentaries, from the original Catfish in 2010 to last year’s Netflix hit The Tinder Swindler.

You wouldn’t think there’s much more gold to mine here, but journalist Hannah Ajala, who helms this eight-part podcast from CBC and the BBC, demonstrates there certainly is. The first episode of Love, Janessa sees a double deception enacted on experienced journalist Simon de Bruxelles, disproving in one swoop two common myths about catfishing: that it only happens to stupid people and that you can’t be duped twice.

This sets the tone for a hall of mirrors-style investigation with Ajala searching for a woman known as Janessa Brazil, whose image has allegedly been stolen for catfish scams more times than anyone else’s. How much does the real Janessa know about the scams? Is she in on any of them? Ajala, who works between Nigeria and London, is especially keen to investigate and unpick the links between scams and West Africa, looking at why Ghana, in particular, is so often the source of catfishing rings.

In episode three, she goes on a deep dive into the culture of Ghana’s Sakawa boys, exploring a complex relationship between crime, spiritualism and the dumping of electronic rubbish, and giving a voice to the scammers to help understand how and why the culture exists. As journalistically rigorous as it is completely addictive, if the early episodes are anything to go by, we’re in for a wild and informative ride. (Lucy Ribchester)  New episodes available every Wednesday at bbc.co.uk/sounds

ALBUMS HELENA CELLE

If You Can’t Handle You At Your Worst, Then I Don’t Deserve Me At My Best (Night School)

Helena Celle aka Kay Logan is arguably the most exciting artist to have emerged from the Scottish underground in recent years. Wildly prolific, the Glasgow-based sound artist warps metal, noise, punk, chamber music, ambient, prog, techno and jungle into an occult vision of her own.

A response, in part, to her 2016 debut If I Can’t Handle Me At My Best, You Don’t Deserve You At Your Worst, her latest lengthily titled release If You Can’t Handle You At Your Worst, Then I Don’t Deserve Me At My Best continues Logan’s inspired mutation of dance music forms. Jungle, house and techno are fed through degraded equipment and aleatoric processes, emerging in a swirl of crunchy lo-fi beats, eldritch wooze and alien bog squelch.

As wonky and fried as the music can sound, Logan has a keen sense of what makes a club track tick. The epic ‘Original Besttrack (Abe’s Oddysee Extended Mix)’ is eminently danceable, with modular synth fizz and gloop spreading spore-like across early 90s pirate radio breakbeats. ‘Snow-Filled Chalice Of My Magonian Exile’, a collaboration with London-based producer Jennifer Walton, sounds like a metal band rehearsing in a games arcade, as power-up arpeggios pogo around a distorted synth riff. (Stewart Smith)

 Released on Friday 31 March.

OTHER THINGS WORTH STAYING IN FOR

A packed month of things to do indoors or to consume on your travels including some stirring traditional tunes, an Edinburgh-set sci-fi novel, and the return of TV’s most devious family

ALBUMS

WARD THOMAS

This Hampshire folk pair launch their fifth studio album. Music In The Madness offers our troubled world some respite in the form of healing themes and sweet, sweet harmonies. Hear the new tunes live at Glasgow’s Old Fruitmarket on Friday 31 March.

n wardthomasmusic.co.uk, Friday 10 March.

RURA

Dusk Moon is the trad quartet’s latest album, following 2018’s In Praise Of Home. Another dynamic celebration of Celtic music and delightful display of eclectic alchemy.

n rura.bandcamp.com, Friday 17 March.

KATE DAVIS

Marking her second studio-album release, Fish Bowl was inspired by the conservatoire-trained jazz musician and art-rock experimenter’s appreciation of Wim Wenders, outer space and the sea.

n ANTI-, Friday 24 March.

BOOKS

LOUISE SWANSON

In End Of Story, the year is 2035 and fiction has been banned by the state. Fern Dostoy is having none of it but is the young boy she has connected with on a prohibited phone line about to give her game away?

n Hodder & Stoughton, Thursday 23 March.

DOUG JOHNSTONE

After 14 successful crime novels, this Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers drummer tries sci-fi with The Space Between Us. When dazzling lights above Edinburgh cause people to suffer strokes, a strange creature is found on a nearby beach.

n Orenda Books, Thursday 2 March.

PODCASTS SNOWCAST

News guy Jon Snow presents this weekly interview pod which so far has featured journalist Jon Ronson, actor Munya Chawawa and neuroscientist Sophie Scott.

n Acast, Tuesdays.

TV TED LASSO

The third and alleged final batch of Ted Lasso has Richmond AFC back in the top flight and ready to take on those giants of soccer, sorry, football. Watch Jason Sudeikis, Brett Goldstein, Juno Temple and co prepare for another challenging season.

n Apple+, Wednesday 15 March.

BOSTON STRANGLER

Keira Knightley, Carrie Coon, Alessandro Nivola and Chris Cooper star in a true-crime thriller about the reporter who believes she has joined the dots in unmasking a serial killer that stalked Massachusetts in the 1960s.

n Disney+, Friday 17 March.

SUCCESSION

Those deceitful and dysfunctional Roys are back causing mayhem in business, politics and family matters. But who will get the upper hand after the dastardly twist at the end of season three?

n Sky Atlantic, Monday 27 March.

Succession (and bottom from left), Kate Davis, Louise Swanson, Ted Lasso

Charmingly hapless and apologetically posh wordsmith Ivo Graham is out on the road with My Future, My Clutter. In our Q&A, this erudite standup talks interdental water flossers, parallel parking and his regret at not having discovered capers sooner

Who would you like to see playing you in the movie about your life? Hard to find the right mid-point between selfaggrandisement and self-deprecation to this hospital pass of an opening question, but I think that mid-point is probably Michael Cera.

What’s the punchline to your favourite joke? ‘The steaks are too high!’

If you were to return in a future life as an animal, what would it be? Penguin please: great look, great life, plus that deep reserve of jokes and facts.

When was the last time you were mistaken for someone else and what were the circumstances? There have been some flattering comparisons to Liverpool

keeper Alisson and chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen in recent years, but I’m not sure there’s ever been any doubt about me actually being them (crucially, I am rarely goalkeeping/ playing chess).

What’s the best cover version ever? I’d be letting down my mid-noughties NMEsubscribing brethren if I didn’t say The Futureheads’ ‘Hounds Of Love’.

Whose speaking voice soothes your ears? Adam Buxton (walking his dog). Mary Anne Hobbs (breathily teeing up some 11am techno).

Tell us something you wish you had discovered sooner in life? Capers. The West Wing. Taking pride in my personal appearance.

Describe your perfect Saturday evening? Mum’s carbonara, family game of Ticket To Ride, and Match Of The Day but we don’t know the scores.

If you were a ghost, who would you haunt? Bezos!

If you could relive any day of your life, which one would it be? The day my daughter was born. Or the first day of Glastonbury 2014.

What’s your earliest recollection of winning something? A history prize at prep school. I won a copy of Roy Strong’s The Story Of Britain that last week, 23 years later, I gave to a local charity shop, still unread. Shameful.

Which famous person would be your ideal holiday companion? Kirsty Young, the ultimate expert in island living.

Tell us one thing about yourself that would surprise people? I own two copies of Dean Windass’ autobiography.

THE Q& A WITH IVO GRAHAM

As an adult, what has a child said to you that made a particularly powerful impression? ‘Can we watch Frozen on your phone?’ Halfway through a performance of the Frozen musical.

When were you most recently astonished by something? Rose Matafeo, one of the most brilliant compendiums of pop knowledge I’ve ever met, not recognising Shakira’s ‘She Wolf’.

What tune do you find it impossible not to get up and dance to, whether in public or private? Dwayne Johnson’s ‘You’re Welcome’, though I am usually being commanded to do so by a four-year-old.

When did you last cry? Aftersun did an absolute number on me from start to finish.

What’s the most hi-tech item in your home? An interdental water flosser that I simply refuse to believe is as game-changing as my father says it is.

What’s a skill you’d love to learn but never got round to? Parallel parking.

By decree of your local council, you’ve been ordered to destroy one room in your house and all of its contents. Which room do you choose? There’s a second bathroom we could probably survive without, though I’d be sad to say goodbye to the Mario Kart posters.

If you were selected as the next 007, where would you pick as your first luxury destination for espionage? Tokyo: my birthplace, and so a neatly symmetrical place to get inevitably bumped off.

Ivo Graham plays The Stand, Edinburgh, Wednesday 22 March; MacArts, Galashiels, Thursday 23 March; The Stand, Glasgow, Friday 24 March.

NEXT TIME

Spring will have finally sprung, but it’ll soon time for us to look further ahead into the summer festival season. We track the vital events, both indoors and out, that are all set to entertain Scottish audiences as the weather becomes (we hope) a little warmer. From Connect to TRNSMT and Hidden Door to Kelburn Garden Party, we’re feeling excited about a sizzling cultural summer. Also in the frame for next issue, we explore a fresh take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, get techy for the Edinburgh Science Festival, brace ourselves for more Succession, and meet the man behind eccentric loser Mr Swallow. Plus, it’s time to truly luxuriate in the legend that is . . . Nicolas Cage.

n Next copy of The List will be out on Friday 31 March.

3

hot shots

Two years ago in Orkney, Scottish composer Erland Cooper buried the only existing copy of his forthcoming album Carve The Runes, deleting all digital files, leaving only a series of clues for those who fancied searching for it. Now freshly dug up, the taped recording will ‘dry out’ as he takes it on a tour across Scotland. Follow the story at facebook.com/erlandcooper.

Pictures At An Exhibition is not your average RSNO concert. As well as stirring music by the likes of Mussorgsky, Ligeti and Gershwin, acclaimed saxophone player Jess Gillam joins the orchestra for a Glazunov concerto, while award-winning illustrator James Mayhew will be live painting onstage. Full dates at rsno.org.uk.

Tramway’s exhibition programme for 2023 opens this month with a sculptural treat from Nigerian artist Ifeoma U Anyaeji. This ‘plasto-art’ practitioner transforms discarded plastics into distinctive sculptures as she reflects on beauty, authenticity and the culture of mass accumulation.

AN

EXPERIENCE LIKE NO OTHER BOOK NOw

IN A CITY LIKE NO OTHER