The List Issue 779

David Duchovny

Sasha Velour

Janey Godley

Adelaide Origin

Yard Act

Birds Of Paradise

Adrianne Lenker

Ethan Coen

Little Lies

Ragnarok

Catherine Bohart

Wise owl. Cheeky imp. Grouchy queer.

come

Bridget Christie, Joan Rivers, Margaret Cho, Julia Morris, Wanda Sykes, Jay Lafferty, Esther Manito, Lucille Ball, Susie McCabe, Tina Fey, Susie Essman, Patti Harrison. A dozen funny women. Want some more names? OK, how about Sara Pascoe, Jenny Éclair, Sarah Silverman, Ali Wong, Aisling Bea, Marjolein Robertson, Diane Morgan, Sophie Duker, Katherine Ryan, Caroline Aherne, Alice Lowe, Rebecca Front. That’s 12 more. You know what, there are lots of others that we could name.

This issue, we pay tribute to the many, many funny women out there and take no heed of the ‘why-don’t-we-have-an-International-Men’s-Day?’ brigade*. The March comedy special is a men-free zone and features our cover star, the excellent Irish stand-up Catherine Bohart, and Janey Godley whose documentary closes the Glasgow Film Festival. Plus, we hear about Sikisa’s favourite holiday, Kiri Pritchard-McLean’s perfect podcasts, and Amelia Bayler’s most beloved pub. We also dip into the dark side of comedy and wonder if anything has actually changed for the better in terms of keeping female comedians safe before, during and after gigs.

Away from the business of comedy, we explore some other delights to be had at the Glasgow Film Festival such as Tummy Monster starring Lorn Macdonald, and David Duchovny’s baseball movie, while also reviewing Origin and The Teachers’ Lounge. Keep an eye out online for further GFF coverage. Also across a busy mag, we interview Ethan Coen as he makes his first movie without brother Joel, chat to Robert Softley Gale about 30 years of inclusive theatre company Birds Of Paradise, and speak to Leeds band Yard Act as they take a different approach with their second album.

Oh, Fern Brady, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jennifer Saunders, Shaparak Khorsandi, Jessica Fostekew, Natasia Demetriou, Victoria Wood, Julia Davis . . . see, honestly, we could be here all day . . .

*we do: it’s 19 November, ya douchebags.

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CEO

Sheri Friers

Editor

Brian Donaldson

Art Director

Seonaid Rafferty

Sub Editor

Paul McLean

Eat & Drink Editor Jo Laidlaw

Travel & Shop Editor

Megan Merino

Advertorial Designer Isabella Dalliston

Writers Ailsa Sheldon, Alan Bett, Alison Strauss, Brian Donaldson, Claire Sawers, Claire Stuart, David Kirkwood, Eddie Harrison, Emma Simmonds, Eve Connor, Fiona Shepherd, Gareth K Vile, Greg Thomas, Haneen AlEid, Isy Santini, James Mottram, Jay Richardson, Jo Laidlaw, Kelly Apter, Kevin Fullerton, Lucy Ribchester, Marcas Mac an Tuairneir, Marissa Burgess, Megan Merino, Murray Robertson, Neil Cooper, Paul McLean, Rachel Ashenden, Suzy Pope

Senior Business

Jayne Atkinson

Ewan Wood

Eric Cantona

Cantona Sings Eric

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SATURDAY 13 APRIL 2024

ABERDEEN MUSIC HALL

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TUESDAY

front the insider

Hmouthpiece

Alison Strauss is programmer at The Hippodrome in Bo’ness, home of the annual HippFest. In an era where film is all loud bells and even louder whistles, she tells us why silent cinema is still golden

ave you seen Dune: Part Two yet? Our desire to ride the very crest of a zeitgeist wave before the next exciting thing comes along sets the rhythm of cinema takings across the land. A normal drop in box-office gross from the first weekend to the second is a massive 40%. At the single-screen Hippodrome, this drop-off would make me think carefully about whether to schedule a blockbuster title at all.

Given the stone-cold data, imagine the reaction I got when pitching the idea of a whole festival of films that first did the rounds about 100 years ago. I was met with quizzical eyebrows and kindly-meant warnings that my heart would be broken because audiences ‘just don’t turn out for dusty old silent films’. Fast forward 14 years and The Hippodrome Silent Film Festival (HippFest) is alive and kicking.

You could put it down to the live improvised or composed music accompaniment that offers a fresh interpretation of each movie. Or that buzz people get from having an excuse to dress up in Gatsby-era outfits without attracting weird looks from the rest of the crowd. But I think it’s also the fact that all those films still ‘speak’ to us. Where do you stand on

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, Murray Robertson tells us which things . . .

Made me cry: I’ve watched The Last Of Us three times in the past year and there’s a scene near the start that gets me every time. The game it’s based on has always provoked the same response and I don’t think I’ll ever get through it unscathed.

Made me angry: What’s happened to Twitter should be criminal. Elon Musk has destroyed an imperfect but essential tool, one with the potential to bring about critical change in the biggest institutions. Now it’s an unusable morass of blue-tick imbeciles, with perpetually bad takes dominating the discourse.

Made me laugh: Surreal comedian Paul Foot’s Dissolve is sublime; a typically whimsical, hilarious show that explores the comedian’s relationship with his mental health. It made me laugh like a drain and I’m repeating Footisms to this day.

Made me think: Documentary Tell Them You Love Me had me questioning the complicated ethics of a relationship between a white academic woman and a non-verbal disabled black man before a jaw-dropping rug-pull turned the whole thing on its head. It’s a fascinating examination of sex, race, class and disability.

Made me think twice: I’ve been closely following the sparse work of Canadian satirist Nathan Fielder ever since I first saw docu-reality series Nathan For You. His big-budget followup, The Rehearsal, is an extraordinary series that defies easy explanation with volunteers getting to practice real-life decisions in an experimental setting that threatens to go wildly off the rails. The comedian’s fearlessness is breathtaking and he’s the closest thing we have to a modern-day Chris Morris. That said, Fielder is the very definition of ‘not for everyone’.

Bradley Cooper’s fake nose in Maestro? Well, you can pick up the debate after watching Lon Chaney as Fagin in the 1922 Oliver Twist. Still raging that Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig weren’t nominated for Oscars? Then check out Frances Marion’s work as screenwriter of The Wind (1928) or director of Just Around The Corner (1921) and ask yourself why, despite evidence of Marion’s hands-on involvement in many stages of the motion pictures she wrote, she is credited with co-directing only one.

Livid that Yorgos Lanthimos erased the Glasgow setting of Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things? Wait until you see how American studios represented Scotland in Peggy (1916) compared to how a Scottish filmmaker lovingly portrayed her Shetland home in The Rugged Island (1933). The old films do still have something to say to us today, even the ones that say it ‘silently’. And in an industry that conspires to make us believe that films have a short shelf life, it’s good to know that audiences will turn out in great numbers for cinema experiences with a timeless appeal.

 HippFest, The Hippodrome, Bo’ness, Wednesday 20–Sunday 24 March, hippodromecinema.co.uk

playLIST

With Glasgow International Comedy Festival coming up this month, it felt only natural to fill our March playLIST with a selection of humourthemed songs. Listen to tracks by Bo Burnham, Kim Petras, Bob Dylan, CMAT, The National and many more . . .

Scan and listen as you read:

head head2

MEGAN

After watching last year’s music video for ‘Oral’ by Rosalía and Björk (which features both singers deep faked onto two martial artists battling each other), the only thing I could focus on, despite deeply respecting their previous artistic decisions, was how bloody awful it looked. With Björk’s overly large facial features that don’t always align to Rosalía’s vacant glare, I honestly would have preferred to see the real women attempt forward rolls for three minutes. Fortunately, in the case of Idles’ ‘Grace’ video, the scope for error is significantly reduced and the underlying joke (which Chris Martin clearly avoided being the butt of by offering to help the chaps out) lands. But let’s be honest, it still looks like it was made in the same tragic cinematic universe as Cats. If we cast our minds back to last year’s Writers Guild Of America strike, the settlement gave artists complete control over when AI can be used in the creation of their work, an agreement I think should be standard across the entertainment industries. But if the aesthetics of deep-fake videos don’t prove that real cinematography made by actual people isn’t infinitely more beautiful and emotive, then maybe ChatGPT can take over my side of this column for the foreseeable.

from the archive

We look through The List’s 39-year back catalogue to see what was making headlines this month in decades gone by

For our latest walk down memory lane we’d like you to imagine us smoking a cigarette, wrapped in a fur coat, donning a red lip and chunky gold jewellery. This month in 1991 we celebrated the final instalment of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather trilogy on our cover and, 33 years later, the mob-wife aesthetic is trendier than ever. Sadly, the film itself hasn’t improved over time, but at least watching Sofia Coppola’s excruciating performance feels less cruel now that she’s an award-winning director herself. Elsewhere in this issue we discussed the release of Dances With Wolves, interviewed the now sadly departed comic Sean Hughes, and heard from a very ambitious Manic Street Preachers.

 Head to archive.list.co.uk for our past issues.

We quietly sit Megan Merino and Kevin Fullerton down in front of a contentious bit of current culture and ask them to weigh in as heavily as they possibly can. With Idles going full deep fake on a perfectly consenting Chris Martin for their new ‘Grace’ video, can such AI shenanigans be justified or is it coming for us all?

KEVIN

My first thought upon seeing a deep-faked Chris Martin was ‘intermittent fasting and a Rockystyle work-out routine really helped him grow out of his gawky phase.’ My second thought was ‘AI is terrifying and will definitely murder me in my sleep.’ The ‘Grace’ video creates a 1:1 reproduction of Martin’s facial movements and tics, and if Idles can do it (albeit with Coldplay’s blessing) what’s stopping some Musk-alike with a grudge doing the same to you, me or anyone else on the planet? In a world ruled by AI, every one of us could be associated with Coldplay’s bedwetting dirges forever. Such is the perfectly reasonable reaction about AI’s implementation into art: it will be exploited negatively soon and corporations will envision a workforce increasingly devoid of human input. By the same token, Idles have shown that using AI in the appropriate context can be witty, subversive and a little bit playful. In tinkering with one video, they’ve created a duality of meaning that’s both technically impressive and fraught with concern. There are ethical worries across all media (and, more pertinently, all media regularly produce fretful or simply bad art) but shrugging them away in a panic before they’ve fulfilled their potential is to seal off a million new artistic avenues.

PICTURE: YELLOW VIDEO BY JAMES FROST & ALEX SMITH; GRACE VIDEO

BY JONATHAN IRWIN, JOHN MOULE & JOE TALBOT, WITH JOYRIDER

Herstory Tours

Hear the real stories of the women who shaped Edinburgh’s history 1ST - 23RD MARCH

Brash tacks

She made Graham Norton blush with her onstage candour, and powers through unfiltered material on everything from relationships to rimming. Kicking off our comedy special with a bang, gossipmonger Catherine Bohart spills the lot to Claire Sawers

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I‘’m a chronic oversharer,’ understates Catherine Bohart, taking a micro-pause to sip her coffee, inhale very quickly, then share some more. ‘Do I use my live performances to process real things happening in my life? Oh, 1000 percent! I love gossiping: my own gossip, other people’s gossip. When I’m writing material, I figure “shall we just do that?”’

The night before, during her show at Edinburgh’s Monkey Barrel, the Irish comedian couldn’t resist leaking a conversation she’d heard earlier through the toilet cubicle wall. It wasn’t anything particularly shocking, nor even especially interesting for that matter, but it draws nervous howls of laughter from the women in the front row when they recognise their own banal comments being roasted onstage.

Bohart is part mischievous imp, part wise owl; a bold and charming mix of confessional, forthright, questioning and queer. Very queer in fact. That part of her identity usually sits front and centre in her writing and TV appearances, and you may recognise her from stints on Live At The Apollo, Mock The Week, The Mash Report and Celebrity Mastermind. Or maybe you saw any of three solo stand-up shows that she’s taken to the Edinburgh Fringe: Immaculate, Lemon and This Isn’t For You, with Immaculate now showing as a comedy special on Prime Video.

The previous night was an excellent work-in-progress version of her fourth show, Again, With Feelings, where Bohart speed-talks articulately through topics including her liberal Irish-Catholic family, lesbian procreation, and the strange things that straight people do. ‘It’s fortunate that a lot has actually happened since my last show two years ago. And I’m not just talking innately boring stuff, like things I notice on the London Underground. I mean big life stuff.’ Namely, beginning a new relationship and finding herself in a problematic London house-share.

Bohart previously dated fellow comedian Sarah Keyworth, with whom she made the BBC Sounds podcast You’ll Do. The couple jousted playfully in a savage Roast Battle on Comedy Central, judged by Jonathan Ross, Jimmy Carr and Katherine Ryan, but the pair split during lockdown. Bohart’s new love interest, affectionately referred to as ‘The Current Girlfriend’, has coincided with the comic contemplating motherhood.

Again, With Feelings discusses rainbow families (‘surely when a son is raised by two gay mums, that is just a little bit too supportive?’) and whether she’s ready to start one. As a 35-year-old bisexual who came

out aged 19, long before gay marriage was made legal in Ireland, she is well placed to deepdive into the complexities of queer culture and poke fun relentlessly at it. ‘I grew up in Ireland around people obsessed with timelines: for owning property, getting married, accidentally getting pregnant; all of that. I’ve not hit any of those milestones yet, so the show is kind of me, lost in the weeds.’

She’s certainly not lost in the weeds professionally, having just announced her own BBC Radio 4 series for later in the year, a topical comedy entitled TL;DR. And she is one of ten contestants, alongside Jason Byrne and Aisling Bea, in LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland, a new Amazon reality comedy show which has aired in over 200 countries. ‘That was one of the greatest jobs I’ve ever had,’ she enthuses. ‘These are Irish comedians I’ve bought tickets to see when I was much younger, or had a crush on, and now I’m on a show with them, being a grouchy queer.’

If you’re thirsty for more Bohart (that stage name was pinched from an ex, as she confided over a Monkey Barrel mic), there are plenty places where she can be found musing on everything from her OCD, a love of stealing toilet roll, and her penchant for butch dykes. Trusty Hogs is her brash, chummy podcast alongside the raucous stand-up Helen Bauer and they’ll be touring it to Australia in April. For wonky takes on the dos and don’ts of queer sex and romance, Shared Baggage is her moreish relationship podcast with Glasgow’s delightful Larry Dean, a gay comedian also raised in Catholicism who, like Bohart, doesn’t have much of a filter when it comes to his own personal life.

‘Doing the podcasts always helps with my solo material. When I’m chatting on Shared Baggage about bad first dates or great ways to have non-penetrative sex, or whatever, it always helps for writing jokes. Then I’ll take some of that onstage and figure out what works and what needs deleted. It’s all about finding the lines, where to push the limits and figuring out how weird and edgy a particular crowd will let you be. I’m always figuring out so much onstage.’

The line between being eminently sensible and mildly evil is one that Bohart treads very skillfully, generally with a megawatt twinkle in her eye, flicking her mane of auburn curls confidently over her shoulder, as she segues smoothly from taxidermy to rimming, or gas leaks to incest. As Graham Norton himself put it, while presenting LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland, ‘Catherine does this sweetness and light thing, but I’ve seen her material and even I blushed.’

With a portion of the recent Edinburgh gig devoted to unpicking the demographics of Bohart’s mixed-sexuality audience, what would happen to her lesbian-centric set if she found herself once again dating a man? ‘Oh god, it would have to be some kind of a miracle of a man!’ she snorts, with wide eyes, before adding immediately ‘although if I dated a man, that would be an easy show to write. At the same time, when a bisexual female friend dates a man, I’m also kind of like “oh right”’, she adds, with a theatrically disdainful eye roll. ‘I guess I’m part of the problem. In fact, it’s taken me to age 35 to realise that the common denominator in all my problems is me: “hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.” Taylor Swift was right.’

Catherine Bohart: Again, With Feelings, The Stand, Edinburgh, Wednesday 22 May; The Stand, Glasgow, Thursday 23 May.

“ PICTURE: FELICITY CRAWSHAW

AAfter last year’s revelations about Russell Brand, it seemed as though the comedy world was having its own #MeToo moment. Isy Santini speaks to a number of acts at this year’s Glasgow International Comedy Festival and asks whether anything has actually changed to make the circuit a safer space for women

lot of lip-service has been paid in recent years to rooting out predators in positions of power and stopping workplace abuse. #MeToo was Hollywood’s attempt at this, but seven years on there are persistent criticisms that little progress has been made. With last year’s allegations of assault and abuse against Russell Brand, the comedy world has had its own reckoning with rape culture and sexual predators. Brand’s career may have suffered, but are things any safer on the comedy circuit as a result of these revelations?

‘I do think it’s got better,’ says Glasgow comedian Kate Hammer. ‘With comedians and those in power being held accountable, people have said “this isn’t OK and you shouldn’t be allowed to do these things, no matter how successful you are.” At the same time, that doesn’t mean it’s made comedy a welcoming space. It’s not a healed community.’

Stand-up Amy Matthews has a similar outlook. ‘Comedy clubs on the whole have better safeguarding in place and better policies around workplace conduct. Some do not. Lots of men have a better understanding and awareness about how their behaviour might be construed regardless of what their intentions were. Some do not. Every answer I could give to any question relating to this topic would be an exercise in “fortunately/unfortunately.”’

Steps have certainly been taken to make women feel safer in comedy spaces, most of which tend to be focused on inclusivity. This year, Glasgow International Comedy Festival has been running a new Introduction To Comedy course for women and marginalised genders in the hope of giving them more opportunities. For comedian and television writer Susan Riddell, having more women on a bill is more than inclusive: it’s key to women’s safety. ‘If you have someone there who’s in the same boat as you and who you can talk to about this stuff, then that’s half the battle,’ she asserts. ‘I see a lot of line-ups that still only have one lassie on the bill and there’s not really any excuse for this these days. There are loads of female acts on the Scottish circuit.’

Riddell has also noticed a recent trend of comedy clubs arranging transport for comedians at the end of afternoon shows. ‘It’s great not only because women feel safer getting home but also it can help women with childcare issues. It was one of the reasons Amanda Dwyer and I started the Sunday afternoon show Material, Girl at the Glasgow Stand.’ As Hammer points out, though, ‘safety has a wide range of meanings.’ According to her, it’s the micro-aggressions that are the most harmful in the day-to-day of her career. ‘Obviously with Russell Brand that was physical harassment and abuse and beyond. I don’t think I’ve heard of that here, although I’m still pretty new. The things that you hear are everything around it, like negging or comments like “they only book her because she has big tits.”’

In addition to all this, material threats to women’s safety are still present. Where pre-arranged transport has become common for afternoon shows, late gigs are another matter, with many female comedians being left to arrange their own transport home. For some this can mean a dangerous walk or getting into a car with a stranger. ‘Not everyone has the confidence to walk home at night,’ Hammer says. ‘Do you have to get a cab because night buses either don’t exist, aren’t reliable, or might not be safe in themselves?’

Micro-aggressions and dismissive attitudes towards women create the environments that allow abuse to happen, and as long as these are still a problem, predators will continue to be made and protected. From walking home alone at night to inappropriate jokes and the ever-present idea that females can’t be funny, there is still a long way to go before women can feel truly safe in comedy spaces. But as Matthews points out, these problems are not unique to comedy. ‘This is a world problem. It’s a workplace problem. It’s a predator problem. It’s a rape culture problem.’

Amy Matthews: Commute With The Foxes, Blackfriars, Glasgow, Thursday 14 March; Kate Hammer: Virginal Virgin Stone, McChuills, Glasgow, Tuesday 26 March; Susan Riddell: Wonder Woman, The Stand, Glasgow, Sunday 31 March; all shows at Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

Susan Riddell

Kate Hammer

”

I was outspoken and cheeky but always delivered the goods

JJaney Godley has lived a life full of laughter and trauma. As a frank documentary featuring her ups and downs prepares to close the Glasgow Film Festival, Jay Richardson talks to the beloved comedian about starting out in stand-up and leaving behind a legacy

aney Godley finds it ironic that even as she’s coping with terminal cancer, near-constant abuse, and calls on social media for her ‘cancellation’, she’s seldom been more in demand. Currently touring her Not Dead Yet stand-up show and publishing a memoir of the same name in August, and with her Radio 4 series The C Bomb returning shortly, she’s also now the focus of Janey; this candid documentary made by John Archer follows the Glaswegian comic as she performs around Scotland, and in Belfast and London.

Showing her treatment for ovarian cancer, revisiting the childhood home where she was sexually abused, and reflecting on her mother’s murder, viewers also see Godley discussing her hugely popular voiceover videos with one of their ‘stars,’ former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, and chatting about offence in comedy with Jimmy Carr. Culminating in an emotional performance at Glasgow’s 3000-seater SEC, the film is a poignant insight into a redoubtable storyteller exposing her vulnerability and admitting mistakes, but who is unable to hide her frustration at being forced to pump the brakes on her career.

‘I want to plan ahead but have to remember that I can only think three months into the future,’ the 63-year-old remarks bluntly at Glasgow Film Theatre, where Janey receives its world premiere as the closing movie of the Glasgow Film Festival. ‘Right now, I’m waiting on a call to tell me how a scan went. I have to accept that I’m always going to be in treatment. And at some stage they’re going to say “we have run out of options; you’re going to die.” But I’m not pacing myself. I’m doing as much as I can, even if I might not live to see all of it.’

Godley’s deprived upbringing in Shettleston and marriage into a gangster family was memorably recounted in her 2005 autobiography Handstands In The Dark. But Janey also features video footage of the comic at 13 and the pub she ran in Glasgow’s Calton area during the 1980s and 90s, before her husband Sean’s family forced them out. What’s also captured is the sheer leap of faith Godley took when beginning stand-up in London in 1994, with her daughter and future support act Ashley Storrie still a young child and Sean struggling.

‘I had to make money because my husband couldn’t work,’ she recalls. ‘He had autism and a lot of problems emotionally after the fallout with his family. I was quite annoyed that I couldn’t get reviewed because I had so much riding on it. It wasn’t a fucking hobby. I wasn’t a middle-class Melinda who could just try it; I needed to make a living! And I did, buying a house in the West End of Glasgow from being funny. I sacrificed a lot. Ashley was left at home when she should have had two parents. The good news was that I was fucking good at it. You can say that I was outspoken and cheeky, that I was too chippy and working-class. But I always delivered the goods.’

It was Storrie who suggested shooting a documentary and she operates the camera during some of its most intimate moments. Now a Radio Scotland DJ, Storrie is about to star in Dinosaur, the BBC Three comedy-drama she cocreated, and Godley is proud that her child has carved out her own career and won’t simply be remembered as ‘Janey’s daughter.’ The comic also reiterates her regret at some historic tweets using offensive language which resurfaced in 2021, maintaining that she was ‘just so ashamed, feeling like I had let down so many people and wanting to kill myself. The only thing that stopped me was my credit-card bill. Just knowing I had to pay that refocused me.’

Janey screens at GFT, Glasgow, Sunday 10 March, as part of Glasgow Film Festival; Janey Godley: On Screen + On Stage tours Scotland between March and May; full dates at janeygodley.com

AVoice of the people

Marissa Burgess profiles Kemah Bob as she brings a work-in-progress show and her distinctive vocal cords to the Glasgow International Comedy Festival

voice with a natural musicality is a gift for any comedian, and Kemah Bob certainly has a wonderfully singular accent. Her Texan burr is soft but with a higher register, and there’s no mistaking her for anyone else (it might not have impressed some idiots who complained about Bob’s accent on House Of Games in 2022, but that’s people for you). However, that’s not the only reason she stands out; she’s gaining ground due to brilliant comedy skills which have led to her acting as tour support for Nish Kumar and Hannah Gadsby.

Born and raised in Texas, Bob (as her website insists, yes, that’s her real surname) came to the UK via a stint in Los Angeles. She cited absorbing a lot of BBC America and developing a penchant for the likes of silly sitcom The Inbetweeners and teen drama Skins as piquing her interest in UK culture. Plus she feels that our comedy scene is more open to riffs on gender, sexuality, mental health, and black cultural identity while noting that Britan’s health system is many steps ahead of her homeland (she gives the eye-watering expense of boob checks in America as a prime example). In addition to her regular stand-up, Bob has also performed as drag alter ego Lil’ Test Ease, a rapper and men’s rights activist. Questioning binary gender identity (Bob uses both she/her and they/them pronouns) and having grown up a person of colour in one of the least progressive states in the US, Bob created the FOC IT UP! comedy club and podcast, providing a safe space for women, trans and non-binary people.

Kemah Bob, The Old Hairdresser’s, Glasgow, Saturday 23 March.

Chuckle sisters

Those live laughs just keep on coming. Here are more top female acts to look out for ahead of the August silly season

MARJOLEIN ROBERTSON

Most likely this magazine’s number one Scottish female stand-up is dominating proceedings at the country’s top two comedy institutions with three different shows. Confused? Don’t be, just get along and laugh.

 The Stand, Edinburgh, Wednesday 6 March, Sunday 9 June; Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, Saturday 23 March; The Stand, Glasgow, Monday 8 April.

ROSIE JONES

Taking time out from receiving relentless online abuse (honestly, what is wrong with some folk?), this future national treasure continues touring with Triple Threat, a show packed with confessions and punchlines.

 Glee Club, Glasgow, Wednesday 27 March.

LAUREN PATTISON

Unabashedly proud to be a northern comic (obviously not the dodgy 1970s kind), this two-time Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee is trying out some fresh material ahead of what will assuredly be a brilliant new set.

 Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, Saturday 20 April.

RACHEL PARRIS

This stand-up and songsmith previously did some Mashshaped reportage and is now proving she has poise. So much so that she picked that word as the title for her new show.

 Òran Mór, Glasgow, Wednesday 1 May.

THE BECHDEL CAST LIVE

You’ll have heard of the Bechdel Test (if not, ask a gentleman to explain it to you), but here is a Bechdel Cast touring show as podcast pair Jamie Loftus and Caitlin Durante chat about a specific movie to see how it shapes up inclusion-wise. And if it fails that test, the people who made it will get ripped to metaphorical shreds.

 Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, Sunday 26 May.

PICTURE: JIKSAW

Rosie Jones

O brother, where art thou?

Drive-Away Dolls is not so much a Coen Brothers movie, as a Coen Brother movie. Ethan Coen, who for years co-directed with his sibling Joel on such masterpieces as Barton Fink and No Country For Old Men, is back in the hot seat.

Only this time, he’s co-creating with his wife and long-time editor, Tricia Cooke, as they deliver a B movie that feels very Coen-like . . . except when it doesn’t.

A raucous and raunchy comedy, it tells the story of the liberal Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and closed-off Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan), two lesbian roommates who go on an increasingly deranged road trip to Florida’s capital city Tallahassee, when a mysterious briefcase comes into their possession. According to Coen, this is a classic trope he and Cooke are playing with. ‘The opposites: the free spirit and the uptight person. It’s Felix and Oscar,’ he says, alluding to Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau’s roles in the classic 1968 movie, The Odd Couple

Ethan Coen didn’t have to look far to find his latest filmmaking accomplice, with wife Tricia Cooke cowriting their racy comedy Drive-Away Dolls. As James Mottram discovers, she pitched a stimulating new element into Coen’s creative mix

Attempting to retrieve the case are two goons, Arliss (Joey Slotnick) and Flint (CJ Wilson), who feel like extras from Fargo. So far, so Coen Brothers. Except this is a film with an abundance of sex, something the Coens always shied away from. How did that feel? ‘Yeah, letting it all hang out, man!’ giggles Cohen, sitting right next to Cooke. ‘Trish liberated me! I don’t know why that it is. It’s definitely true: me and Joel don’t do sex stuff. It’s . . . urm . . . yeah. Uh-huh. True.’

The script was originally written 20 years ago, which might explain why the story is set in 1999. ‘We didn’t do a lot of pre-planning about which characters would be interesting,’ says Cooke. ‘We had a title we started with; and the title was fun. We wanted to write a movie that would fit the title. And we took our time, there was no deadline. We tried to write at least three or four times a week, for a couple of hours each day.’

Initially, the plan was for Allison Anders (1992’s Gas Food Lodging) to direct but when it wasn’t funded, the script got shelved. Then the pandemic arrived. Joel disappeared to make The Tragedy Of Macbeth

with his wife Frances McDormand and Denzel Washington, while Ethan suggested to Cooke that they revisit their script. Alongside Qualley and Viswanathan, they rounded up co-stars Pedro Pascal, current Oscar nominee Colman Domingo, and Coen regular Matt Damon.

Doubtless the legions of Coen Brothers fans will wonder how Ethan has fared without his sibling. It was ‘much the same process’ working with Cooke, he insists. ‘We started at the beginning, talked the scene through, back and forth. We didn’t outline or anything, as me and Joel do not. And we just talked the movie through from beginning to end: “OK, this happens. Alright, then, what’s the cut? What’s the next scene?”’

Cooke has worked with the Coens ever since 1990’s Miller’s Crossing when she began as an apprentice editor before graduating to assistant and then editor. But she admits that cutting a film she’s written is a different beast. ‘I found it hard to be objective because I was so close to the material. There were certainly times when I was like “I wish we had a different set of eyes on this.” Just for me. Ethan didn’t feel like that. But

Behind the scenes of Drive-Away Dolls as a masked-up Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke work with Geraldine Viswanathan and Margaret Qualley

occasionally I was like “I wish we could bring someone else in and get their opinion.”’

The film offers a positive and fun portrayal of lesbian culture and much of this is down to Cooke. She recently revealed in an interview that she is gay, and that she and Coen, while still married and raising two children, both have other partners now. ‘Collaborating workwise is a way for us to stay very connected,’ she explains. ‘We see eye-to-eye, we have similar sensibilities artistically. So that made it easy to collaborate.’

This being a Coen production, there are plenty of B-movie references swirling around in the film’s cinematic stew. ‘We’ve seen lots of those movies,’ says Coen. ‘We rarely if ever referred to specific ones. But they’re all in there.’

That said, Cooke picks out Poison Ivy, a 1992 erotic thriller which starred Drew Barrymore as a seductive teen. ‘I don’t know if it qualifies as a B movie,’ says Cooke, who reveals they borrowed one specific scene from that film. ‘Asides from that, I think it’s an amalgamation of a lot of different B movies.’

When it came to casting the two leads, Coen and Cooke really scored with their choices. While Qualley, the daughter of actress Andie MacDowell, is known for her turn in Quentin Tarantino’s

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Viswanathan is a rising star who emerged after featuring in 2018 comedy Blockers. ‘They

both have really great skills,’ says Cooke. ‘Geraldine has great comedic timing. She can be very funny. She’s very dry. And Margaret’s just very charismatic on the screen.’

Not one to ever pontificate, Coen demystifies the whole process. ‘Sometimes an actor walks in that just wakes you up and you go “OK, then that’ll be fun to watch.” It’s that simple. If it’s a good performer and they understand the script, it’s just a pleasure. And that doesn’t happen a lot. You spend a lot of time casting, and people come in and most of them are capable actors and it’s OK. But then somebody comes in and really lights it up and you go “OK man, it’s definitely them.”’

Typically for a Coen movie, it’s also populated by male idiots (much in the way George Clooney was the brothers’ regular go-to guy to play the buffoon in films such as O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Hail, Caesar!). ‘Generally the men are idiots. I can’t explain that!’ chuckles Coen.

‘We wanted the women to have agency and be empowered,’ adds Cooke. ‘And we thought it was important to portray the men as incompetent and foolish.’ So where does this long-standing love of male idiocy come from? ‘Yeah,’ Coen smirks, ‘where does that come from, Trish . . . ?’

Drive-Away Dolls is in cinemas from Friday 15 March.

Fly high

high

AFor 30 years, Birds Of Paradise have been leading the charge for disabled people in Scottish theatre. Artistic director and CEO Robert Softley Gale talks to Neil Cooper about his pride in reaching this landmark anniversary and the company’s ambition to go global

few weeks ago, past and present artistic directors of Birds Of Paradise Theatre Company met up to take stock. It had been 30 years, after all, since the foundation of what has become Scotland’s premier producer of theatre both created and performed by disabled artists. Current company boss Robert Softley Gale gathered alongside his former co-director Garry Robson plus their predecessors Morven Gregor and founding director Andrew Dawson on the eve of Don’t. Make. Tea., Rob Drummond’s dark comedy about the benefits system.

Among the many things discussed, Dawson reminded Softley Gale how he had visited his school to present a workshop on the-then freshly launched Birds Of Paradise. Keen to get young people involved, Softley Gale was invited to take part, only to tell Dawson he was far too busy. While Softley Gale’s interest in theatre developed while a student at the University Of Glasgow studying Computer Science and Business Management, he never saw himself taking an on-stage role. However, after speaking at an event about his experience of education as a disabled man, he was asked to audition for what would become the first integrated theatre company in Europe, founded at the Theatre Workshop venue in Edinburgh.

Despite having never acted before, Softley Gale spent a year with the company. This led him to Birds Of Paradise, first as an actor in Garry Robson’s play, The Irish Giant (2003). In the two decades since, Softley Gale has seen how the company has developed into a major theatrical force. ‘I think for any

company to be going for 30 years is quite remarkable,’ Softley Gale says of the organisation he refers to as BOP. ‘I think that is especially so for a company like BOP, where the external perception is maybe around doing work for disabled people that’s for a good cause. I think because of that, it’s even more of an achievement just to be here after 30 years and to still be making work that’s having a big impact and bringing in big audiences. So, yeah, it feels good.’

Birds Of Paradise was formed out of an arts and disability-based community theatre project initiated by the Fablevision company that gave the new offshoot its name. With collaborations between Fablevision and BOP overseen by directors Michael Duke and Liz Gardiner, BOP went on to become fully independent in its own right. Early works included The Farce Of Circumstance (1994) by disabled playwright Tom Lannon and directed by Dawson. Other key productions included a collaboration with 7:84 Scotland on Sam Shepard and Joseph Chaikin’s word-based collage Tongues (1997), and a new play by Alasdair Gray, Working Legs (1998).

Under Morven Gregor, BOP produced Ian Stephen’s football-based Brazil 12 Scotland 0 (2005), which also featured Softley Gale in the cast. Other plays presented during Gregor’s tenure included Mouth Of Silence (2006) by Gerry Loose, Kathy McKean’s Beneath You, Spider Girls Are Everywhere (2007), Offshore (2008) by Alan Wilkins, and a production of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage And Her Children (2011) featuring Alison Peebles in the title role.

Softley Gale was appointed joint artistic director with Shona Rattray and Garry Robson in 2012. Productions since then have included Wendy Hoose (2014) by Johnny McKnight in co-production with Random Accomplice, and Crazy Jane (2015) by Nicola McCartney. Rattray departed BOP in 2015, with Robson leaving in 2018 after appearing alongside Softley Gale in Blanche & Butch (2017) and directing The Tin Soldier (2017).

With the company having already brought disabled theatre into the 21st century, Softley Gale’s sole stewardship began with My Left/ Right Foot (2018), an irreverent musical which he wrote and directed, and was co-produced by BOP with the National Theatre Of Scotland. Working with composers Scott Gilmour and Claire McKenzie (aka Noisemaker), and Jerry Springer: The Opera composer Richard Thomas, Softley Gale’s play tackled liberal sensitivities over inclusivity head-on. This scurrilous yarn featured an amateur dramatics group attempting to comply with equality laws by doing a production of Jim Sheridan’s Oscar-winning 1989 film My Left Foot (the movie that saw able-bodied Daniel Day-Lewis ‘crip up’ as disabled artist Christy Brown). Purposeless Movements (2019), another Softley Gale work, was produced as part of Edinburgh International Festival.

Continuing to blaze a trail for disabled theatre with work that can sit alongside any other company on artistic merit alone, Softley Gale sees the future of BOP as global. ‘We already do a lot of work overseas, in Rwanda, Nepal and China,’ he says. ‘We engage with disabled artists all over the world and look at how we can help them to develop what they do. I think that’s really exciting in terms of what that lets us bring back to Scotland. We can all be quite guilty of telling our stories over and over again, and that’s great, but what I’ve been finding fascinating when I meet a disabled person in China is that we see how different their lives are, but also how similar they are to mine. So I think more international collaborations is something we definitely want to explore.’

As a demonstration of how far BOP have come over the last 30 years in terms of creative access, Don’t. Make. Tea. includes a description for the visually impaired, a sign-language interpreter, and captions woven into the play’s story. ‘It’s been great the last couple of years,’ Softley Gale reflects. ‘Myself and my colleagues have been at events where people come over and say “oh, Birds Of Paradise, I love their work.” The reputation that we’ve now got around the UK and further afield is very strong, and it’s great to build on that to keep giving people productions they can enjoy, and come back to again and again. As a theatremaker, regardless of disability or any of that, that’s where you want to be.’

Don’t. Make. Tea., Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Thursday 21 & Friday 22 March; Gaiety Theatre, Ayr, Tuesday 9 April; Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Thursday 11–Saturday 13 April; Cumbernauld Theatre At Lanternhouse, Tuesday 16 April.

Heavenly pursuits (main page): Don’t. Make. Tea. (from top): Purposeless Movements, Wendy Hoose, My Left/ Right Foot, Blanche & Butch

PICTURE: TOMMY GA-KEN WAN

PICTURE: ROBERT PERRY

PICTURE: MIHAELA BODLOVIC >>

PICTURE: TOMMY GA-KEN WAN

A new Podcast, hosted by The Hebridean Baker

eat & drink

EAT OUT EDINBURGH

Get the gang together: Eat Out Edinburgh has returned with a whole month of brilliant eating and drinking deals to explore, all designed to entice locals into the city centre. There are lots of wallet-friendly set-price menus to try, such as three courses plus a cocktail costing £30 at Harvey Nichols Forth Floor Brasserie, or four courses for £25 at Ka Pao. Shiny new Rio Brazilian Steakhouse also gets in on the action, joining venues like The Huxley and Gaucho by offering straightforward discounts, while Lady Libertine and Hawksmoor have also put together a little extra deal for citycentre workers. (Ailsa Sheldon) n edinburghcitycentre.co.uk/eat-out-edinburgh, Friday 1–Sunday 31 March.

You booze you lose

Cutting back on the drink is an increasingly mainstream choice in Scotland. As the no and lowalcohol sector develops apace, Ailsa Sheldon speaks to the people creating quality hangover-free drinks

Reducing alcohol intake is no longer simply seen as a beginning-of-the-year flagellation. It’s become something of a truism to say that this trend has been driven by healthconscious Gen Z consumers: 44% of 18 to 25-year-olds choose low and no-alcohol, while 39% avoid alcohol entirely (source: YouGov). However, a lot of alcohol-free drinks are bought by those seeking moderation; people who don’t want to drop booze completely but are keen to drink less of it without sacrificing flavour and complexity.

In Scotland, beer is leading the response to these changing tastes. For example, this year Jump/Ship Brewing launched Scotland’s first fully alcohol-free brewery. Founded by Sonja Mitchell in 2019, Jump/Ship came about when she could only find weak, imported alcohol-free lagers, rather than the Scottish craft beers she loved. ‘It felt fundamentally wrong that you should be given a worse offering just because you didn’t want the alcohol,’ says Mitchell. The new brewery at Pathhead in Midlothian will quadruple capacity for Jump/Ship; and it’s needed: UK sales of nonalcoholic drinks grew 89% between 2018 to 2023, and are predicted to more than double again by 2028 (source: Mintel).

This shift is not just about beer. Made in Fife, Feragaia is a non-alcoholic spirit; layered and complex, it has citrus, herbaceous and spiced notes, and botanicals including chamomile and cayenne. Significantly, it doesn’t pretend to be gin (and is all the better for it). Feragaia founder Jamie Wild says consumer awareness was an initial barrier, but they found keen advocates among chefs and bartenders. ‘These are the people who really care about provenance and craft, and the care and attention that goes into our spirit,’ he notes. ‘They are our greatest champions.’

One such champion is Caoimhe Duignan at Hawksmoor Edinburgh. ‘It’s all about inclusivity,’ she says. ‘We want to be able to match the eating experience with our drinks. It’s not the percentage of alcohol that creates that experience, it’s the quality, and no one should be left out.’ Hawksmoor has developed alcohol-free cocktails with intricate flavours and textures, while new Edinburgh restaurant Montrose offers soft-drink pairings for their tasting menu, including sea buckthorn with bergamot, and a tannin-rich blackcurrant shrub.

Pubs are in on the game too. ‘We have definitely seen an increase in low-alcohol orders,’ confirms Jonny Kane at Roseleaf in Leith. ‘We try to have a good range from Jump/Ship, plus Lust For Life (an IPA from Brulo) and Guinness 0% which is popular and delicious.’ Edinburgh’s Salt Horse has just launched an alcohol-free beer on tap, and now carries Athletic Brewing from the US. The bar reports a big increase in orders, but, according to Robert Taylor, for their customers it’s about moderation rather than giving up. ‘It’s not that people aren’t drinkers,’ he insists. ‘They just want choice.’

There’s something rotten in the state of hospitality and Jo Laidlaw is fretting

This column is a place for celebrating the things worth knowing about across Edinburgh and Glasgow’s brilliant hospitality scene. And there’s plenty to laud this month, from ritzy openings (Rio Brazilian Steakhouse in Edinburgh) to local changes (Rogue Bros At The Boathouse in South Queensferry) and well-deserved expansion of beloved spots (Eusebi Deli’s new place in Gibson Street, Glasgow).

But my notebook is also crammed with closures. And what’s striking is the way these demises cut across every type of venue, from Viva Mexico to Viva Brazil, from Beer Café to The Black Bull, from places that have been open for decades (Bells Diner) to establishments lauded by the critics (Michelin-starred The Cellar). Particularly in city centres, venues are taking drastic action to survive: cutting opening hours, staff and menus, which risks setting up a vicious cycle of poor food, limited service and reduced access.

It’s not for me to declare an emergency, but something’s wrong. In a cost-ofliving crisis, industry campaigners are rightly looking to government for support. But there is a lot we can do as customers, even when disposable income is short. We can support local. When things go wrong, we can talk to staff before we rant on Tripadvisor. We can remember word-of-mouth’s power and we can spend what cash we have mindfully. In other words, we can do our bit where we can. Right now, it feels like that’s more important than ever.

side dishes

good in the hood

We wander through a neighbourhood and tell you where to drop in for food, drink and groceries. This month, Suzy Pope takes a walk down Edinburgh’s Morningside Road

From the churches of Holy Corner down to the start of Comiston Road, Morningside Road hosts a stream of bakeries, coffee houses and brunch spots as well as options for bigger gatherings. For morning meals with a Turkish twist, sunshine-yellow La’Telve offers bakes and cakes spanning the length of Europe including little Parisian macarons and honey-loaded baklava. For something more substantial, Salt Café is one of Morningside’s best brunch destinations, and a homemade cinnamon swirl and serious coffee from MoMo Café isn’t a bad way to start the day either.

Indulgent lunches are on the cards at Masti Indian Street Food: BYOB keeps the price down (the mango lassis are a worthy substitute) and it boasts a classy interior. Matto Pizza (pictured) is a crowd-pleaser, serving up Neapolitan-style sourdough pizzas from an open oven in funky surroundings. If the smell of chocolate from Chocolatiers Edward & Irwyn gets your mouth watering, then pick up sweet (or dark) treats to take home, or sit in for a sinfully satisfying hot chocolate.

In the evening, Fin & Grape on nearby Colinton Road pairs curated fine wines with fresh seafood dishes and plenty of vegetarian options that are just as perfectly presented. For something fast and satisfying, Alaburrito has an eclectic array of burritos, tacos and chimichangas that really hit the spot. Finish off with a pint in Canny Man’s, a family-run Edinburgh institution that’s been on the corner of Morningside Road and Canaan Lane since 1871. Best known for its paraphernalia-covered walls and the fearsome reputation of a former owner, things have mellowed in recent years but it’s still very much a perfect local’s local.

Rio Brazilian Steakhouse

Researched and compiled by The List’s Eat & Drink team, tipLIST suggests the places worth knowing about around Edinburgh and Glasgow in different themes, categories and locations. This month, we go beyond pizza to search out the top Italian restaurants where handmade pasta and regional delicacies reign supreme

Italian

tipLIST

EDINBURGH GLASGOW

CONTINI GEORGE STREET

103 George Street, contini.com

Contini’s interior is stunning: it’s in a former grand banking hall. Starters of oozing burrata and the signature pasta dish of orecchiette keep one foot solidly in southern Italian food, while the menu brilliantly melds Scottish and Italian produce.

DIVINO ENOTECA

5 Merchant Street, divinoedinburgh.com

This Old Town basement wine bar and restaurant shirks regional to serve cuisine from the length and breadth of Italy. Think mussels and prawns over golden saffron risotto, and steak served rare as you like. Wine flights offer a taste of each Italian region.

LOCANDA DE GUSTI

102 Dalry Road, locandadegusti.com

Rusticana is the watchword here and Neapolitan/ southern Italian cuisine is king. Specials of fresh fish and handmade pasta change daily. It’s a family-run establishment and you can feel the love in every sun-ripened Sicilian pepper and beautifully balanced vegetable ragù.

RADICIBUS

2 Deanhaugh Street, radicibus.co.uk

This sleek but cosy basement spot in Stockbridge takes Scotland’s abundance of wild game, foraged mushrooms and seafood, and turns it into Italian fine dining. Choose between a seven-course tasting menu or go à la carte: artisanal Italian wines are carefully selected to pair with each dish.

TIPO

110 Hanover Street, tipoedinburgh.co.uk

Stuart Ralston’s third Edinburgh restaurant is an ode to Italian regionality. There are hearty pastas and main-sized meals alongside small plates, so you can follow the trend of tapas-style wine bar eating or buck it for a filling bowl of strozzapreti or pappardelle with crab.

BAR VINI

80 Victoria Road, barvini.com

Contemporary Southside bar-diner with a small menu (a few antipasti and dolci, handful of pastas) that’s big on hitting the traditional Italian spot. Creative specials, diligent cocktails and thoughtful wines amplify the appeal.

CELENTANO’S

28–32 Cathedral Square, celentanosglasgow.com

Set in the splendid Cathedral House, Celentano’s takes its name and concept from the owners’ honeymoon in Italy. They retained their Michelin Bib Gourmand this year thanks to inventive Italian cuisine and impeccable sourcing.

CELINO’S PARTICK

235 Dumbarton Road, celinos.com

A second venue for the Celinos, who have helped imbue Glasgow with a love of Italian food since 1982. This West End spot delivers on the family motto ‘tutto per tutti’ (everything for everyone) with extensive all-day sit-in options and a cornucopia of deli takeaways.

EUSEBI DELI

152 Park Road, eusebideli.com

Attractive corner deli-diner facing Kelvingrove Park, selling all manner of homemade delights courtesy of Giovanna Eusebi, whose family have long been feeding authentic Italian food to Glaswegians. Plans are afoot for a new venue on nearby Gibson Street.

SUGO PASTA

70 Mitchell Street, sugopasta.co.uk

After setting the bar really high with sister Paesano Pizza, there’s a similar treatment here for fresh pasta dishes in the Mackintosh-designed Lighthouse Building. Food and wine menus scoot around Italy for regional inspiration and flavour.

Grab a coffee near . . . Central Station, Glasgow

LABORATORIO ESPRESSO

93 West Nile Street, labespr.tumblr.com

Ultra small, ultra minimal, ultra cool. There are only ten seats inside but if you can’t get a perch at the window, just order an espresso, stand by the counter and rattle it, Milan-style.

ABSOLUTE ROASTERS

10 Waterloo Street, @absoluteroasters on Instagram

Absolute Roasters use Dear Green beans, with medium or dark roast options. Its location in the financial district serves as a pleasant and plucky contrast to those big-gun chains that dominate. Takeaway only.

GORDON STREET COFFEE

Central Station, 79 Gordon Street, gordonstcoffee.co.uk

Nice to see a bricks-and-mortar indie actually in a station (they’re a roastery too). There’s usually a queue of the recently alighted and about-to-embark, but a mezzanine affords a bit of breathing space from the churn.

TANTRUM DOUGHNUTS

28 Gordon Street, tantrumdoughnuts.com

Coffee and doughnuts are one of life’s beautiful double acts. Of the latter, we’re talking the likes of crème brûlée, pistachio and hibiscus. Coffee comes from Glasgow institution Papercup.

RIVERHILL COFFEE BAR

24 Gordon Street, riverhillcoffee.co.uk

Reclaimed timber and a dark palate give Riverhill a hint of calm and warmth. Elegantly assembled snacks include shawarma wraps, reubens and frittatas.

Radicibus

Sugo Pasta

Riverhill

SPANISH PANIA

They say that cars made for the European market are often given nonlinguistically specific names that feel familiar to say but sound exotic enough to be exciting. ‘Mondeo’, ‘Supra’, ‘Corsa’ and the like. Pania, the Merchant City’s newest spot, can be approached in a similar vein: Spanish? Italian? What’s the vibe?

Well, the answer is mainly Spanish, yet unashamedly Italian when it suits them. This non super-specific balance works in their favour, alongside the big changes they’ve made to the site. Former inhabitants (including Marmalade Skies and wine bar Boudoir) didn’t embrace the big windows, but Pania does. The tables look out, or you can sit at the bar (extended, with full kitchen view). ‘Charcuterie’ is spelt out in massive red letters above hanging hams and peppers, and there are exciting-looking jars of pickles and brines. It all feels appropriately cosmopolitan.

With a day and night offering, energy stays high throughout, supported by an always-serving bar that emphasises vermouths, sherries and interesting wines, while Victoria Malaga lager is on draft in half pints only. Bold stuff. Daytime focuses on sandwiches and lunchy things (croque monsieur, grilled chorizo baguette), shifting to charcuterie boards and small plates around 4 or 5pm (they’re pretty fluid). The menu is not so much cooked as assembled and the quality shines through; big chunks of glossy, marinated Manchego arrive first, followed by gilda (a pepper-anchovy-olive combo), delivering a one-two of piercing peppery vinegar.

There are some hot dishes, including stunning morcilla de arroz: Spanish black pudding that uncrumbles with toasty rice and a delicate finish of sweet paprika. Various bread-based options for dipping are available and utterly necessary. Everything is punchy, everything makes sense and everything has style. Maybe specificity is over-rated: if enough Glaswegians are up for that (and the half pints), perhaps Pania itself is the vibe. (David Kirkwood) n 60 Candleriggs, Glasgow, pania.uk; average price for olives, bread and charcuterie plate £20.

MEXICAN PAZ TAQUERIA

The only thing on Paz Taqueria’s website is a phrase: ‘there will be tacos’. But that’s proved enough to pack the place with in-the-know taco lovers since it opened in December. Low lights, good tunes, great service, and the sure hand of Stuart McCluskey make this a fun space to spend an hour or two.

The cocktail list is short and punchy: the spicy Margarita is as strong as it should be, with fiery crushed chilli rim. The menu splits between antojitos (sharing dishes) and pairs of tacos (sharing optional). Sopes de choripapa are thick chewy corn patties, topped with creamy refried beans, crispy potatoes, chorizo or cauliflower, and a generous flurry of goat’s cheese. It’s a messy, delicious dish, even better with a scoop of the accompanying crunchy chilli sauce. The corn tacos are homemade, served just off the grill with salsas that zip from fresh herbs. Battered cod with charcoal and squid ink crema and fresh coriander is a hit, as is the veggie fried potato and black beans with salsa verde and pico de gallo.

The pulpo (octopus) taco is the most expensive dish on the menu at £9, still a bargain for the city centre, and worth every penny with beautifully tender confit octopus paired with pineapple. Indeed, every taco pair is strikingly different, each with an intriguing combination of flavours and textures, a few surprising ingredients and a real sense of fun. Just like Paz, which brings together the familiar and the experimental to hit all the right notes. (Ailsa Sheldon)

n 64 Thistle Street, Edinburgh, paztacos.com; average price for two tacos £17.

Drinking Games

He’s like an intrepid explorer, but drunk. That’s right, Kevin Fullerton is back again to bellow another booze-filled task into the void and onto these pages. This month’s challenge . . . find the poshest bar in all of Edinburgh’s New Town

Chuff chuff and chocks away, it’s time for a posho safari. We’re hunting big game on this old-fashioned round-up, so I’ll be lugging my giant net and my blunderbuss to bars across Edinburgh’s New Town. As is customary on all posho safaris, each bar will be rated by how many wealthy patrons I collect (or ‘kidnap’, if you want to spoil this premise with semantics) in 35 minutes or less. Nouveau riche, trust-fund teen or coined-up codger: as long as they fit in the back of my van, they’re fair game. Right, on with the hunt.

With said blunderbuss and equally said net in hand (and an electrified dog collar attached to my belt should these poshos get shirty), I entered The Wally Dug, a basement bar which my editor reassured me was where ‘that Saltburn lot’ hang out. The clientele were rugger lads and rah-rah girls for whom a stay in a manor house was a matter of course. Indeed, it’s possible to enjoy a pint in one of the side rooms here, provided you can ignore the chaos and clamour of coins-in-mouth accents and excitable yoofs. Planting a Le Creuset canvas bag on the barroom floor proved effective enough to lure a gaggle of the youthful wealtherati into my traps. Weightage of poshos caught: a Durham-ton.

Next, The Cumberland Bar, a veritable haven next to my wild night at Wally’s Saltburn cellar. It was a quiet evening at the bar, but the impeccable staff, cute-as-a-button pooches padding around, and sedate nooks in this brown-panelled den made it, literally, rich pickings when you’re out on such a scavenge. Weightage of poshos caught: a Downton-kilo.

The final stop on my posho safari was The Magnum, an upmarket restaurant and bar with an ambience both polite and formal. There were a few old money types in there, the kind who probably imbibe food through an orifice that only the financially lubricated are told about, and yet the staff and stonking drinks list made this Dundee scumbag feel eminently welcome. Perhaps I’ll return some day to finagle my way into one of these loaded men’s wills while enjoying the impressive wine list this calm environ has to offer. Until then, it’s in the net with them. Weightage of poshos caught: five Joanna Hogg-halves.

BAR FILES

Creative folks reveal their top watering hole COMEDIAN AND PODCASTER AMELIA BAYLER

It’s gotta be The Old Toll Bar on Paisley Road West. I am ‘aff it’, as they say here, so I like to rate a bar from the vibes first of all and then from the snacks available. I’ve hosted the pub quiz there, covering for my friend Bryce, and had the best time. The clientele embraced my ‘Name That Apple Round’, where I bring a selection of apples to the quiz and they have to guess which kind they are. Pretty self-explanatory. They sell Tayto crisps which are an ICONIC CRISP! The bar is right across from The Grand Ole Opry if you feel like you wanna do some line dancing, and is next door to the amazing Turkish kebab place Istanbul. Perfection!

n Amelia Bayler performs Easy Second Album at Van Winkle West End, Saturday 16 March, as part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival; also on mixed bills at The Stand, Glasgow, Tuesday 19, Friday 22 & Saturday 23 March, and The Stand, Edinburgh, Friday 5–Sunday 7 April; Joy Agenda, her podcast with Jay Lafferty, is available on all the usual platforms.

10

WWW

An

Mimi’s sets out to deliver delicious food and stunning drinks that taste as divine as they look.

Nestled a two-minute walk from Stirling Train Station, our restaurant offers you both a warm welcome and a delightful escape as if stepping into a whimsical garden terrace.

Email: hello@mimisbrunchhouse.co.uk | Insta: mimisstirling | Address: 22-28 Stirling arcade, Fk8 1AX

Booking link: https://mimis-brunch-house.resos.com/booking

travel & shop

STÒR LIFESTYLE

Describing itself as an ‘ethical lifestyle atelier’, Stòr Lifestyle specialises in artisan homewares, natural health and beauty products, books and children’s toys, as well as floristry (courtesy of sister business Aspen Florals) and wedding photography by Jacek Hübner. The recently renovated Broughton Street location aesthetically displays products in a Scandinavian haven of neutral colours, wood and exposed shelving. Stòr’s team works closely with makers from across Europe, Canada and Nepal to curate their selection of quality home furnishings, which are all designed to stand the test of time. Meanwhile, smaller items such as soaps, kitchen accessories and candles are perfect for gift buying. (Megan Merino)

n 29 Broughton Street, Edinburgh, storlifestyle.co, @storlifestyle.co on Instagram.

PICTURE: JACEK HÜBNER

There’s no better time to visit Adelaide than during festival season. But if you need a break from those madding crowds, Paul McLean has some handy tips for taking a time-out in the South Australian capital

When its citizens aren’t asking which school you went to or mispronouncing the word Lego (they say ‘laygo’ and reckon the rest of the world is wrong), Adelaide is a great place to be. In February and March, as the scorching summer heat wanes (giving way to the vaguely less scorching autumn heat), the city goes full-on party animal for just over four weeks with the cultural motherlode of Adelaide Fringe, Adelaide Festival, Adelaide Writers’ Week and world-music celebration WOMADelaide.

It’s a brilliant time to be in town. While shows are dotted about everywhere, two of the biggest Fringe venues (The Garden Of Unearthly Delights and Gluttony) sit side by side in parkland transformed by Spiegeltents, food stalls, bars, fairy lights and funfairs. It’s pretty magical. But when you crave a breather, need a hit of nature or just want to cool off, there are plenty options around the CBD (central business district) or a short hop away by train, tram or bus.

Start out on North Terrace with the Art Gallery Of South Australia, a stunning, eccentrically curated collection (also check out the very fine South Australian Museum next door). A short stroll takes you to the sanctuary of Adelaide Botanic Garden. While you’re immersing yourself in the native flora and fauna, don’t miss the Museum Of Economic Botany: it’s the last museum of its kind in the world, full of hundreds of strangely beautiful papier-mâché fruit and fungi scale models.

wanderLIST: Adelaide

By now, it’s time for a dip. Glenelg is probably the city’s best-known beach, but maybe try venturing north to Henley, Grange or Semaphore for something a little less hectic. Or dive into one of the city’s outdoor pools: Norwood and Unley are great, but the George Bolton Swimming Centre in Burnside’s Hazelwood Park is the pick, with its three pools encircled by gentle grassy slopes and towering gum trees (there’s a café too).

A short trip into the nearby Adelaide Hills (20 minutes by car, 30 by bus), with its wineries, picturesque towns and Mount Lofty Botanic Garden, also makes for a fine day out; an added bonus is that it’s usually several degrees cooler. Adelaide is rightly hailed for its culinary scene, and any foodie worth their salt should definitely make their way to Adelaide Central Market for terrific produce and a great mix of food outlets.

Round off your festival breather with a bona fide Aussie spectacle: Australian rules football (you can catch preseason matches at this time of year). One oval ball, one oval field, four goalposts at each end, two teams of 18 strapping blokes: it’s tough, skilful and, quite frankly, chaos. It’s also bloody thrilling, and with a beer in hand, life will seem pretty good. Heaps good as they say in SA.

For info on Adelaide’s festivals and the city’s best food and drink spots, check out our Adelaide Summer Festivals Guide at list.co.uk/adelaidefestival

on your doorstep

Whether you’re after gizmos or gastronomy, Suzy Pope recommends three Scottish markets to visit over a weekend

BOWHOUSE

A sprawling indoor market awaits you at Bowhouse in the East Neuk of Fife. Fresh produce straight from the estate’s market garden is on offer alongside indie-brewed Futtle beer and meat from the onsite butchery. Producers from across the area gather to show off their plump strawberries, blackcurrants and leafy cabbages. Plus, there are plenty delights to sample from the artisan bakers and street-food stalls while live music jingles away.

 Balcaskie Estate, St Monans, second weekend of every month, bowhousefife.com

THE BARRAS

Vintage Tamagotchis, handmade crystal jewellery and slogan t-shirts galore: is there anything The Barras doesn’t have? Take a turn down Sustainable Fashion Row for all your vintage-clothing desires or hit one of the myriad street-food stalls for dirty hot dogs and noodles slathered in sauce. This vast indoor space hums with patter and chat, sometimes to the backdrop of an impromptu live piano rendition.

 Gallowgate, Glasgow, weekends, barrasmarket.com

STOCKBRIDGE MARKET

Fresh fruit and vegetables from farms across East Lothian and the Borders are bountiful within the stalls at Stockbridge Market. And there’s always an intriguing selection of street food such as fresh, handmade arrabbiata from The Artisan Pasta Maker or piping hot tubs of rice and seafood from Lovely Paella. Wandering the craft stalls is a delightful way to spend a Sunday.

 Saunders Street, Edinburgh, Sundays, stockbridgemarket.com

my favourite holiday

As stand-up comic Sikisa tours her latest show, she shares a chaotic tale about the neon city that never sleeps

VEGAS! SIN CITY! My only holiday in 2023 took me to America for the first time, where I found myself in a hilariously unexpected situation: I was the lone woman on a trip to Las Vegas with five rowdy men to celebrate a 40th birthday. The guys, fuelled by excitement and one too many pre-flight drinks, were like a whirlwind of chaos as they navigated their way through the airport.

From the moment we touched down, I knew I was in for an adventure. From blackjack tables to strip clubs, karaoke to rooftop pools, I found myself in the midst of a non-stop party that seemed to defy all logic and reason. And you know what? I was in! The trip’s first highlight came when we tried our luck at a karaoke bar. With alcohol giving us Dutch courage, we took to the stage one by one, belting out off-key renditions of classic hits. When it was my turn, I went full Britney Spears, complete with choreographed dance moves.

The second highlight was my roommate coming in at 4am, so wasted he knocked himself out on the bedside table and threw up on me two hours later. Why was this a highlight, you may be wondering? Because the lads and I bonded and laughed so much on this trip that we created memories which will last a lifetime. That in itself has to be the third and final highlight. As for the rest of our antics . . . luckily, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Sikisa: Hear Me Out, The Old Hairdresser’s, Glasgow, Friday 22 March; Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, Saturday 13 April.

Fast fashion

After enjoying a viral moment thanks to a certain Ms Swift, Little Lies co-owner Jade Robertson reveals all to Megan Merino about this 1970s-inspired womenswear brand

If the recent Super Bowl taught us anything, it’s that an endorsement from Taylor Swift can elevate even the biggest brands to new heights. Co-owners of Perthshire-based womenswear label Little Lies, Jade and Stuart Robertson experienced their own version of the ‘Swift effect’ this year when the pop behemoth was pictured wearing one of their designs. ‘It’s not something you can really curate or orchestrate,’ says Jade. ‘You couldn’t pay for that kind of exposure. To put it into context, we met our monthly target in a day.’

Named after a Fleetwood Mac song and inspired by the wardrobes of rock icons Stevie Nicks and Robert Plant, Little Lies has music woven into its very fabric. ‘I fell in love with that era as a teenager,’ recalls Jade. ‘My auntie was in a band in the 70s and she would tell me about being at parties with Led Zeppelin and The Beatles.’ Little Lies began as an online boutique, stocking clothing, accessories and homeware sourced from global wholesalers. When they rapidly outgrew this business model in lockdown, the Robertsons decided to relaunch as a brand instead. ‘Now we want to design everything ourselves in-house,’ says Jade. ‘All of our items are manufactured exclusively for us so we’re a fashion label as opposed to a shop.’

A new spring/summer collection arrives in April, and is sure to include signature flow dresses, flared trousers and graphic tees. Stocking sizes from eight to 24 as standard, Jade wants every shopper to be able to enjoy Little Lies. ‘A lot of what we do is about women feeling great in clothes and feeling like they’re expressing themselves as opposed to following trends. We think about buying what we call “future vintage”, pieces true to your personal style that you’ll have and adore for the rest of your life.’

little-lies.com, @shoplittlelies on Instagram.

shop talk

SONNY COOPER

Sonah ‘Sonny’ Cooper’s jewellery is an exercise in contemporary heirlooms. From reworking vintage cutlery into elegant bangles and creating delicate charms and adornments for necklaces, to his range of bold and chunky signet rings, Cooper’s pieces are designed to last.

 sonnycooperjewellery.co.uk, @sonny_cooper_ jewellery on Instagram.

KILO PAPA

Fine-line drawing fans rejoice as Kilo Papa’s artwork ticks all your design boxes. Artist and founder Kym Parker creates beautiful prints and homeware inspired by Scotland. From detailed monochromatic love letters to Glasgow

Back with a selection of local independent jewellers, artists and artisans, Claire Stuart recommends three delightful brands proudly made in Scotland

landmarks to colourful creations of Munros, Kilo Papa’s prints will please city slickers and nature lovers alike.

 kilopapastudio.com, @kilopapastudio on Instagram.

PAULIN

With frequent artist collaborations and beautifully crafted timepieces, it’s no wonder Paulin is a favourite within Scotland’s creative scene. The Glasgow-based watchmakers have been a staple for over a decade, carving out their niche by creating versatile and bold designs for both your wrist and your walls.

 paulinwatches.com, @paulin_watches on Instagram.

Paulin

AN ACCIDENT/ A LIFE

An accident can change anyone’s life in the blink of an eye, but for a ballet dancer whose career is built around movement, the transition from able-bodied to paraplegic person contains an extra layer to contend with. In his new piece, An Accident/A Life, Marc Brew explores the car crash that bisected his life as a dancer, propelling him from ballet-trained classical rising star to pioneer of new movement languages as a disabled artist. For this piece he has joined forces with choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, who directs Brew in a solo that explores profound and pivotal moments from both their lives. (Lucy Ribchester) n Tramway, Glasgow, Friday 22 & Saturday 23 March.

going out

“

I hope I don’t have to pay Elon Musk

gfwogsal i lmfestival•

Since The X-Files made him a star, David Duchovny has added novelist, singersongwriter and film director to a packed CV.

Adapting his own novel for the big screen, Duchovny talks with Jay Richardson about failure, flatulence and Fox Mulder’s possible return

From his mother, a teacher from Scotland, David Duchovny grew up valuing education. But in the park with his father, a New York Jew from a dynasty of Polish-Ukrainian writers, he cultivated his love of sport.

So when writing and directing his debut solo script, a 1999 episode of The X-Files, he crafted a satirical story about an alien who loves baseball and hides himself by playing in the old preintegration leagues.

An English graduate from Yale and Princeton, and respected fivetime novelist, the man who first made his name as supernaturalist FBI spook Fox Mulder is acutely aware of baseball’s place in the canon of American literature, as memorialised by the likes of Don DeLillo, Bernard Malamud, WP Kinsella, and his own hero Philip Roth.

And in the shadow cast by The Natural, Field Of Dreams and A League Of Their Own, the 63-year-old has fought shy of describing his second feature, Bucky F*cking Dent, as a baseball movie. ‘I get my guard up,’ he admits in his measured drawl about the film based on his own 2016 novel. ‘There’s been a lot of interesting writing about baseball and America. But it’s just something I played as a kid. It reeks of childhood dreams, of hero worship, of heartbreak or exultation. Also, it’s slow. It’s not a modern game.’

The film is a backhanded tribute to Bucky Dent, an unheralded New York Yankees shortstop who broke Boston Red Sox hearts in 1978 with an unexpected home run, denying them a World Series final spot and a shot at their first title in 60 years. But it’s really about Yankees-stadium peanut vendor and struggling novelist Ted (Logan Marshall-Green)

and his terminally ill father Marty (Duchovny), whose health fluctuates with his beloved Red Sox’s form.

In the 15 years it took Duchovny to bring Bucky to cinemas, from screenplay to novel then back into screenplay, he had aged out of playing the hippyish but simmering Ted and into cranky but dryly funny Marty. Meanwhile, Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Stephanie Beatriz is Mariana, Marty’s ‘death specialist’ nurse whom Ted takes a shine to. Hesitant about gendering sport as an emotional proxy, the enabler that allows men to express their feelings, Duchovny ventures: ‘I don’t want to get attacked for this, I’m not saying women can’t enjoy sport. But it does channel a lot of masculine concerns. Being defeated makes men feel vulnerable. And they like being part of a team. You can share your love of a team with someone you have trouble talking to, like a parent. It can open up pathways that might otherwise not be open.’

Men also deflect with humour. The film balances heart-rending moments with broad comedy, including memorable scenes of Ted and Marty embracing naked and incessantly breaking wind. ‘Did you know Tesla has an app that makes fart noises?’ Duchovny marvels. ‘We auditioned all these farts but ended up using this app from my car. I hope I don’t have to pay Elon Musk.’

He began writing novels in 2014, scaling back his acting. Having portrayed ‘David Duchovny’ on The Larry Sanders Show and drawn upon his publicly disclosed sex addiction for Californication, it’s tempting to read him into Ivy Leaguer-turned-wannabe author Ted or secret memoirist Marty. However, while also pursuing a parallel late career as a singer-songwriter, he maintains that he’s uninterested in

autobiography. His lyrics tend to universality. And he chuckles as he stresses ‘there is art involved. There’s very little of my life in there. But as Neil Simon suggests, it’s all autobiography really, even the stuff we make up.’

He’s launching a podcast, Fail Better, echoing another of Bucky’s themes: that life belongs to the losers. Nodding to Samuel Beckett, Duchovny feels that ‘the richest, most humbling, most profound and human thing is failure. And resistance. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ Returning to the UK shortly to shoot Malice, a psychological thriller from Rev’s James Wood in which he stars alongside Jack Whitehall, he’s also hoping to adapt his 2021 novel Truly Like Lightning for television.

The X-Files creator Chris Carter remains a sounding board. Alongside giving him a chance to act with Billy Connolly (‘as funny and charming and smart as we all know; a talented, talented guy’), the hit sci-fi series educated him in filmmaking, through the ‘osmosis’ of working with ‘wonderful’ directors. ‘I was coming out of graduate school, not really knowing anything,’ he recalls. ‘The X-Files taught me how to move a story forward; how to make a plot work over three acts.’

It also predicted conspiracy theories turning mainstream. And if the series were to be revived, as has been mooted, he’s open to Mulder returning. ‘Yeah, I’m proud of it,’ he enthuses. ‘I love the people associated with it and I feel it’s an evergreen show. The world has changed since then though, so how would the show change? It’s an interesting question and one that would have to be answered.’

Bucky F*cking Dent, Cineworld, Glasgow, Wednesday 6 & Thursday 7 March.

Monster’s ink

From Bridgerton to Bridgeton, actor Lorn Macdonald dips his toe into a comic psychodrama about a warped pop star and an unhinged tattooist. Tummy Monster’s creator Ciaran Lyons chats to Eddie Harrison about budgets and Bieber

O‘n the set, I showed people a picture of Lorn in his Bridgerton costume; they just couldn’t believe it was the same guy,’ says Ciaran Lyons, writer-director of psychological thriller/dark comedy Tummy Monster. Making the jump from costume drama to playing a tattoo artist under pressure from a threatening pop star is quite a reversal. Macdonald plays the stressed-out parlour owner who enters into a dangerous mind game when unexpectedly trapped in his shop with a sinister international pop star, played by Orlando Norman.

‘Orlando came in with such great energy; we originally imagined his character as a kind of grungier Justin Bieber,’ says Lyons, making his feature debut after helming a series of videos for acclaimed Glasgowbased studio Forest Of Black. ‘There are a few Bieberisms in there, but we were also thinking about someone like Post Malone, and what the psychological process is with someone who has that kind of public persona. Orlando gave us that.’

With cinematic antecedents in the two-man psychological warfare of Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast, and also the transformative competitive bromance of David Fincher’s Fight Club, Tummy Monster’s action sees the men try and wear each other’s resistance down. A vigorous five-day shoot in the East End of Glasgow provided the setting for a showdown between two artists.

‘I try not to tell people how much the film cost or how long it took to shoot until after they’ve seen it; there are pre-conceptions people have of small budgets,’ says Lyons. ‘We shot largely on one location and wanted it to be claustrophobic, but also colourful and constantly moving. Shooting on an Easter weekend in Glasgow with a karaoke party going on next door and a Celtic-Rangers match playing at the same time just added to the overall intensity.’

Tummy Monster, GFT, Glasgow, Saturday 2 & Sunday 3, Thursday 7 March.

IO CAPITANO

Based on true stories of African migrants making their way to Europe, this focuses on two teenage pals escaping poverty in Senegal and heading for Italy, eventually confronting mortal danger en route.

 GFT, Friday 1 March.

FALLING INTO PLACE

Directed by German actress Aylin Tezel, her debut follows two strangers (Chris Fulton and Tezel herself) whose encounter may be brief but it offers temporary respite from their own miserable lives.

 GFT, Saturday 2 March.

THE VOURDALAK

With future cult status stamped all over it, this plush French horror (featuring several nods to Edgar Allan Poe) revolves around an aristocrat getting himself into all manner of bother in the depths of nightfall.

 Cineworld, Sunday 3 March.

MILK TEETH

A survivalist drama with fairytale undertones as a mysterious young woman unexpectedly arrives at an isolated community which doesn’t know whether to welcome or destroy her.

 GFT, Monday 4 March.

HIGH AND LOW: JOHN GALLIANO

Kevin Macdonald creates yet another intriguing documentary, this time about the fashion designer who aimed to get back on his feet after a dramatic fall from grace.

 GFT, Tuesday 5 March.

cinema scope

From horror to romance and documentary to action, why not try a lucky dip with one film a day across the March leg of this year’s Glasgow Film Festival

TENTIGO

 Cineworld, Wednesday 6 March.

BABY ASSASSINS 2 BABIES

 Cineworld, Thursday 7 March.

DRIFT

gfwogsal i lmfestival•

A family are in mourning over the patriarch’s death but he has left behind a rather sobering and embarrassing version of himself that threatens to destabilise his surviving relatives.

Two young hired killers are back for a sequel and in hot water when a duo aim to take their place in the Assassins’ Guild.

Cynthia Erivo and Alia Shawkat star in this drama about a West African refugee who is homeless and traumatised but trying desperately to find luck near a Greek holiday resort.

 Cineworld, Friday 8 March.

THE WELL

An Italian horror film that will make your blood run cold as an art restorer finds herself in peril from an unholy curse after trying to bring a medieval painting back to its former glory.

 GFT, Saturday 9 March.

BANEL & ADAMA

This French-Malian-Senegalese romantic drama pairs two young adults who could barely be any different. But when they fall in love, Adama is forced to decide whether he will make the ultimate sacrifice.

 GFT, Sunday 10 March.

Glasgow highs (from top):

Io Capitano, Milk Teeth, Tentigo, Drift

“

PICTURE: ALEKEY KIM

cab a •ter

Sasha Velour first sashayed onto our screens in 2017, serving up an intellectual, gender-fluid glamour that won her the season-nine crown of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Having penned The Big Reveal, a part memoir, part study of drag, she has now adapted it for the stage in a onequeen live show. Here, she talks silk pyjamas and political herstory with Lucy Ribchester

The Big Reveal is the first book you’ve written. I imagine the change from performing to writing is quite a big one, and wondered what made you decide now was the time to write a book? I’ve always loved books. I loved designing and doing layouts for them as my day job before I was a drag queen. In my mind I always dreamed one day I could write a book about drag. It was initially formulated as a memoir, but I felt that the point of my life has been uncovering some of the history of drag, and becoming a drag queen while learning about where this art form comes from with all the ups and downs of how it’s been received by the world. So that was the story I wanted to tell: my life through the history of drag and vice versa.

You’re a scholar of drag, which came across on your Drag Race-winning performance. Are there any forgotten queens from history that readers will discover through your book? I hope so! There are a couple of figures that really pop out for me from history that I don’t hear about a lot. One is Coccinelle, a trans woman drag performer who lived in Paris and was a star of cabarets in the 1950s and 60s. She also founded organisations to support trans women around the world and help share resources, long before the internet existed. I love that connection between performance and advocacy. Another huge influence is José Sarria who, in the 60s, was the first drag queen to run for political office. She lost the election but was out about being a gay person and drag performer. She founded the Imperial Court System, which raises money through drag balls and still exists today.

Obviously I would love to imagine that Sasha Velour’s writing day involves silk pyjamas, 9am daiquiris and a 24 carat-gold Cartier fountain pen. Can you tell me a bit about your routine as a writer? I love that vision; I wish it were that glamorous. The silk pyjamas isn’t so far off. But my vice is coffee, so that fuelled the writing process. And then I could only do about 30 minutes at a time before I had to go and lie on the ground and second guess all my choices. I have so much respect for writers and I’m amazed at the process. It’s so hard to really tell a captivating story with words. I’m much more comfortable with gestures and gloves and wigs.

I feel the same way about drag. The art of drag blows my mind. There are so many elements: performance, comedy, costume. I think the fact you’re doing both is just ridiculous I do feel like the experience of writing a book is making me better at drag, in terms of trying to really express myself in just one of the languages of drag. I had never put as much thought into the words I chose while being on stage. And as I started adapting the book into the show, I felt an even better capacity for using language to express what I want to say, as well as the reveals and the costumes.

How did you go about translating what you’d written into a stage show? I chose some sections from the book that I felt needed to be performed to make more sense. It wasn’t a literal translation, but all of the numbers are fantastic reveal performances. I really tried to push the idea of what a reveal can mean beyond the most literal, exploring ideas; or the surprise of an interpretation you wouldn’t expect. And the show’s setting is a living room and a house; so much of the story is a very personal one. I tried to find interesting ways to make the history come to life on stage without it being a lecture series. Although I could do that as well . . .

What’s so special to you about the art of reveal? I guess I’ve always believed drag tells the truth about the world through exaggeration, metaphor and play. And I think it’s always revealed the real fluidity to people’s expressions of gender and beauty, and shown the way that our appearance is changeable. Which maybe opens up possibilities for people in real life too. And then I think we’re revealing the fact that we’re gay and we’re queer through drag: we’re not hiding. That’s the most abstract level of it. I also love that so much of drag is about surprise, of all the different kinds. Surprise in life reminds us that there’s something to keep hoping for and living for.

Sasha Velour: The Big Reveal, SEC, Glasgow, Friday 15 March.

GAELIC ARTS DUNCAN BÀN MACINTYRE ANNIVERSARY

Contemporary Gaelic poets Mary Ann Kennedy and Peter Mackay have joined forces with community initiative Ionad Gàidhlig Dhùn Èideann to bring the life, works and legacy of Duncan Bàn MacIntyre to greater notice, 300 years after his birth. For Kennedy, MacIntyre’s poetry endures, a collection ‘of national importance, every bit as much as that of Burns.’ Fitting, then, that a new crowdfunder is underway, aiming to bring a memorial slab to Edinburgh’s Makars’ Court.

Kennedy returns to Edinburgh, alongside Gillebrìde MacMillan and Allan MacDonald, at the Scottish Storytelling Centre’s memorial concert on Wednesday 20 March, the bard’s birthday. As she notes, this event will remind audiences that ‘every Scot worth their salt should be familiar with his exquisite nature poetry, fearless commentary on contemporary politics, land management and environmental issues.’

Mackay appears on that anniversary date alongside other Edinburgh Gaelic poets at the Scottish Poetry Library, with a programme which asserts that Edinburgh too has always been part of the Gaelic imagination and that MacIntyre has been the main figure in claiming the city’s own Gaelic identity. Subsequent events include a lecture by Dr Anja Gunderloch (Rockfield Centre, Oban, Saturday 23 March) while Friends Of Queen’s Park in Glasgow host a celebration of piping, poetry and song (Sunday 24 March). Mackay believes the walk to MacIntyre’s Druim Liaghairt birthplace near Glen Orchy (Sunday 24 March) will similarly underscore the poet’s ‘rural way of life which might seem quite alien to 21st-century Edinburgh. But this is the loveliest way of doing it, by bridging Highland Argyll and Edinburgh.’ (Marcas Mac an Tuairneir)

future sound

Our column celebrating new music to watch continues with Kilgour, a Glasgow-based folk and rock five-piece. The band’s frontman talks to Fiona Shepherd about existentialism, epiphany and not checking his spelling

Alesson in pronunciation: when recommending Glaswegian quintet Kilgour to discerning indie-rock listeners, please do resist the natural Scottish urge to rhyme their name with ‘hour’ and go for ‘gore’ instead. The band are named after Kilgore Trout, a key character in Kurt Vonnegut’s classic satire Breakfast Of Champions. Kilgour frontman Fionn Crossan is a ‘massive Kurt Vonnegut fan. I love the absurdness of his writing and his ability to say something that would make you laugh as much as it would make you cry.’ But he (Crossan, that is) forgot to check the name’s spelling before setting up his new band’s Facebook page. So Kilgour they remain.

Crossan hails from Belfast where he grew up on folk music. ‘My dad plays mandolin and my childhood was spent in pubs with him when he was playing in trad sessions.’ His own formative tastes included Nirvana and Slipknot, and he spent years as a drummer with no particular notion for songwriting until he had a Ben Howardinspired epiphany in his late teens, picked up guitar again and began experimenting with open tunings. His own songs started flowing even as he was gigging as the drummer in indie rockers Brand New Friend.

‘The Belfast music scene is great,’ he says of this time. ‘It’s very small compared to the Scottish and UK scenes but the benefit of that is there are so many different styles of music going on you end up

playing gigs with wildly different acts.’ Crossan soon discovered the difference in scale when he moved to Glasgow to study. ‘Immediately I loved it. Just being able to pick any night of the week and there was some band I liked playing somewhere or something that sounded interesting. It amazes me that even in the most difficult times for live music there’s still a million things going on in Glasgow.’

Kilgour are now part of that ecosystem, having formed in 2019 with bassist Euan McMahon and then expanding to a five-piece featuring guitarist Isaac Davie, keyboard player Katie Mackie and drummer Jimi Maffei. They’re built on a batch of songs Crossan wrote while hunkering down back in Belfast during the first covid lockdown, playing with his dad and indulging his love of noise on his first electric guitar, bought with furlough money. The yin and yang of folk and rock (but mostly rock) can be heard on an impressive debut album, How To Put Your Hat On. ‘Existentialism is a big theme, being a cynical stressed-out guy as everybody was in lockdown,’ reflects Crossan. ‘But now it is very much about getting these songs out to as many people as possible.’

How To Put Your Hat On is released by Last Night From Glasgow on Friday 8 March, and launched at Stereo, Glasgow, Saturday 9 March.

ART MARTIN BOYCE

In a celebratory programme of visual art that marks 50 years of Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket, Glasgow-based artist Martin Boyce will transform the gallery with his sculptural installations inspired by textures and forms of the built environment. He last presented work here in 1999 as one of the participating artists in Visions For The Future, a landmark showcase of early-career Scottish artists. Since then, Boyce has gone on to represent Scotland at the 2002 Venice Biennale and won the 2011 Turner Prize.

Before Behind Between Above Below has the artist forming atmospheric landscapes which merge interior and exterior spaces, all the while referencing lasting legacies of 20th-century modernist design. Incorporating works made between 1992 and the present day, Boyce stages unique environments for each room of the gallery, accentuating its striking architecture and remarkable structural history. Upstairs, Boyce amalgamates sculptures from recent years ‘to create a new landscape’ that resembles a ‘bourgeois apartment.’ In the downstairs warehouse, he toys with the idea of readying artwork for public display by granting us access to a part of the artistic process that usually remains behind closed doors. Elsewhere, a homage to the designers who profoundly influence Boyce can be found; namely, twins Jan and Joël Martel, who are most famous for their series of concrete cubist ‘trees’ from 1925.

Boyce finds inspiration in every corner of his everyday life: from photographs of architecture taken on his travels ‘to a broken piece of fence on a walk to the studio.’ Full of eclectic references, this solo show promises an opportunity to discern the evolution of the artist’s practice as he moves toward a potential of sculpture to create ‘a dream-like place.’ (Rachel Ashenden)

n Fruitmarket, Edinburgh, Saturday 2 March–Sunday 9 June.

THEATRE COLLIDE

During his childhood, Sean Logan’s family brought a dusty Casio keyboard down from the attic. ‘I would delight at the positivity and closeness it brought when I would meticulously listen to a piece of music and recreate it note for note for my family over a few days,’ recalls the self-taught composer and multi-instrumentalist who uses music to help with his life on the autistic spectrum. You may have seen Logan on Channel 4’s The Piano while he is also the subject of a BAFTA-winning short film entitled Harmonic Spectrum

Logan is now preparing for Collide, the latest Cryptic Nights event, which features his collaboration with 3D designer and filmmaker Angus Bradley. Their creative partnership began through a shared interest in building landscapes that seamlessly merge the physical and digital realms. ‘Our discussions and fascination in art as a communication tool meant when I had an opportunity to create a piano album, the first step was to learn how to work collaboratively with someone from a different discipline,’ explains Logan. Soon enough, the pair would break the boundaries of music and performance.

‘Music and art in all its forms is extremely important for everyone,’ Logan adds. ‘Being able to create something into the world and say “this is from my mind” is very therapeutic.’

Although growing up with autism and coping with issues including sensory overload and sleep irregularities has not been easy, Logan was unable to abandon the thought that he could write and perform live. ‘Lacking certain fundamental facilities shared by most but receiving great praise, recognition and encouragement in my music and other practices long since informed me that there was no going back.’ (Haneen AlEid)

n CCA, Glasgow, Thursday 7 March.

DANCE CHUNKY JEWELLERY

Symbolism is strong in jewellery. From inheritance pieces to engagement rings, there is something about hard and colourful adornments that always means more than just decoration. For Barrowland Ballet’s Natasha Gilmore it was the implied symbolism behind a piece of birthday jewellery that provided the springboard for her latest piece, a collaboration with co-creator and performer Jude Williams and director Ben Duke. ‘It started as a joke over a piece of jewellery Natasha was given for her (not 21st) birthday,’ says Williams. Gilmore continues: ‘I’d been gifted a piece of jewellery that was chunkier than any I’d had previously. Was it perhaps that the jewellery gets chunkier to balance out our hips, or to make a statement as middle-aged women become more invisible?’

From irreverent beginnings, Gilmore and Williams’ ideas began to blossom into a work that encompasses birth, life, death, playfulness, sorrow and the responsibilities of caring. The two have been friends for years which meant their experiences had overlapped. But with such personal material, it was important to both performers that an objective eye was brought onboard to harness it. Enter director Duke, whose genre-defying work for Lost Dog and Rambert has won rave reviews.

‘I’ve had a talent crush on Ben for years,’ says Williams. Through workshops and guided improvisations, together they drew out a piece that blends theatre, dance and song while balancing light and dark. ‘I think for us,’ says Gilmore, ‘chunky jewellery captures the humour of the work and of our laughterfilled relationship. The jewellery women wear, and are gifted over their lifetimes, tells a story.’ (Lucy Ribchester) n Tramway, Glasgow, Saturday 9 March.

THEATRE

3 TO SEE

A big hit when it appeared for a special residency at the 2022 Edinburgh International Book Festival, This Is Memorial Device (Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Thursday 28–Saturday 30 March) takes to the road this spring. David Keenan’s novel about a fictional yet perfectly plausible Airdrie rock band is adapted by Graham Eatough, with a peerless Paul Higgins (pictured) in the key role of fanzine editor Ross Raymond who is tasked with relaying to his audience why this cult group were so special.

If you were told by a man you trusted not to enter a locked room even if you have a key, what would you do? You’re going to open it, right? And what if entering that room reveals unimaginable horrors perpetrated by that man? This is the premise of Emma Rice’s Blue Beard (Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, Tuesday 12–Saturday 30 March) which she wants you to know isn’t as heavy as it might sound. After all, the tale is narrated by a chorus of nuns.

A mere seven million theatre-goers have been chilled to their bones by The Woman In Black (Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Tuesday 26–Saturday 30 March) and if you haven’t seen it yet (it’s run for over 30 years in London’s West End and also spookily floated its way north from time to time), brace yourself. This adaptation of Susan Hill’s 1983 gothic novel should have you pinned to your seat in terror. (Brian Donaldson)

Sunday 3 March

Alestorm

Saturday 9 March

Jo Whiley’s 90s Anthems

Sunday 10 March

Agnieszka Chylińska

Monday 11 March

Tom Odell

Friday 15 March

Yard Act

Saturday 16 March

The Musical Box 2024

Monday 18 March

The Gaslight Anthem

Friday 22 March

Eric Nam

Sunday 24 March

Madison Beer

Monday 25 March

Thundercat

Wednesday 27 March

Thursday 28 March

Declan McKenna

Friday 29 March

Reginald D Hunter

Sunday 31 March

How Did This Get Made?

Wednesday 3 April

Caity Baser

Friday 5 April

Tim Dillon

Sunday 7 April

Hawkwind

Monday 8 April Bryson Tiller

Friday 12 April

Eric CantonaCantona Sings Eric

Saturday 13 April Cock Sparrer

Friday 19 April Lainey Wilson

Saturday 20 April Tate McRae

Tuesday 23 April

Jon Pardi

Thursday 25 April

RuPaul’s Drag Race UK vs The World Tour

Saturday 27 April

Scotland Calling 2024

Sunday 28 April

Train

Monday 29 April

Akon

Tuesday 30 April

Wednesday 1 May

Tom Walker

Thursday 2 May

Lil Yachty

Friday 3 May FLETCHER

o2academyglasgow.co.uk

HAAi DJ MARKY

GOING OUT FURTHER AFIELD

Get yourself away from the central belt and out into various parts of Scotland where the cultural landscape is just as rich and varied. Among the highlights this month are a feast of festival jazz and poetry, a dance piece about fragility, and acclaimed trios in the fields of folk music and cabaret

ABERDEEN

ABERDEEN JAZZ FESTIVAL

The Granite City vibrates with the sound of top jazz from the likes of Brian Kellock, Kimberley Tessa, Graeme Stephen, kitti, Colin Steele Sextet, and Ali Af eck & The Spicy Lil’ Devils Quartet.

 Various venues, Thursday 14–Sunday 24 March.

NICOLA BENEDETTI PLAYS SIMPSON

Taking time out from running the Edinburgh International Festival, the country’s foremost violinist tackles Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony as well as performing a brand-new piece penned speci cally for her by Mark Simpson.

 Music Hall, Thursday 21 March.

DUNDEE

SCOTTISH DANCE THEATRE

The company’s artistic director Joan Clevillé takes audiences on a cinematic and surreal journey with The Life And Times, a meditation on both playfulness and fragility.

 Dundee Rep, Friday 29 & Saturday 30 March.

INVERNESS

MCGOLDRICK, MCCUSKER & DOYLE

This very ne folk trio return with another selection of top tunes and charming chat as the (respectively) Mancunian, Glaswegian and Dubliner take their crowd on a stirring trip.

 Eden Court, Friday 29 March.

KIRKCALDY

GAIL PORTER

Having made her stand-up debut at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, this former TV presenter capitalises on the acclaim she received, touring across the land with Hung, Drawn And Portered Quality punning there.

 Adam Smith Theatre, Friday 1 March.

PERTH FASCINATING AÏDA

Veterans of the comedy-cabaret game, this threesome of Dillie Keane, Liza Pulman and Adèle Anderson are marking the troupe’s 40th anniversary with a typical set of rude, raucous and rollicking songs.

 Perth Concert Hall, Tuesday 12 March.

UNICORN

This new museum’s inaugural exhibition traces the mythical history of Scotland’s national animal. An enigmatic symbol, the one-horned creature is explored in art, science and antiquity.

 Perth Museum, Saturday 30 March–Sunday 22 September.

ST ANDREWS STANZA

Scotland’s International Poetry Festival can be enjoyed in person and online, with Hannah Lavery, Anthony Joseph, Alycia Pirmohamed, Jason Allen-Paisant, JL Williams, and Fleur Adcock among those appearing.  Various venues, Friday 8–Sunday 10 March.

STIRLING

JACK

Directed by Gareth Nicholls and written by Liam Moffat, this A Play, A Pie And A Pint production is a dark comedy about one man’s relationship with a puppy that could well be his saviour.

 Macrobert Arts Centre, Tuesday 5–Friday 8 March.

Fascinating Aïda (and bottom from left), Kimberley Tessa, Gail Porter, Scottish Dance Theatre

PICTURE: STEVE ULLATHORNE

With Origin, Ava DuVernay once again probes the inner workings of systemic prejudice, this time through the story of one remarkable journalist. Emma Simmonds lauds a timely film featuring big ideas and characters who are defiantly human

What links the Holocaust, India’s class system and slavery? That’s what African-American journalist Isabel Wilkerson set out to discover in her sensational 2020 book Caste: The Origins Of Our Discontents. In this appropriately ambitious and desperately moving take on Wilkerson’s story, Ava DuVernay shows how the writer came to her conclusions, doing so amid great personal turmoil.

When we meet Isabel (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), she is leading what appears to be a charmed life, featuring swanky galas, powerful public speeches and domestic bliss. Although her elderly mother

Ruby (Emily Yancy) is ailing, the pair share a touching bond, and Isabel is well supported in her efforts to care for Ruby by her devoted husband Brett (Jon Bernthal). A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and acclaimed author, Isabel is being courted by an editor who wants her to weigh in on the tragic shooting of teenager Trayvon Martin. She’s initially reluctant, due to concerns for her mother’s health, but when personal tragedy strips away her distractions, Isabel seeks solace in work.

Origin follows this remarkable woman as she challenges the idea that racism is the driving force behind America’s persistent mistreatment of its black population, instead attributing it to the concept of caste: the phenomenon of putting one group above another in a hierarchy, regardless of racial origin. Isabel travels to Germany, where she learns how the Nazis used US race laws to figure out how to brand Jews as inferior, with the ultimate goal of exterminating them. Later, she goes to India and hears about the abysmal treatment of the Dalits and parallels with the subjugation of black Americans, discovering that Martin Luther King Jr and revered Dalit scholar Bhimrao Ambedkar had made this connection before her. The film also brings to life some shameful stories from history which crystalise the suffering.

DuVernay has form in making us think and care about prejudice and systemic oppression. Selma was a hugely stirring civil-rights drama, mini-series When They See Us shone a light on terrible injustices stemming from the Central Park jogger case, while her documentary 13th delivered an illuminating look at the US prison-industrial complex, persuasively arguing that slavery is still alive and kicking today.

film of the month

Here, the director builds on those strengths and shows admirable curiosity as she crafts a film that contemplates a wider explanation for America’s wrongs and acts as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Watching Isabel strive to uncover the roots of our divisions while battling sometimes all-consuming grief is as gripping as any thriller; fluid, Terrence Malick-evoking photography and gorgeous fantasy sequences from cinematographer Matthew J Lloyd illustrate how our heroine becomes lost in the fog of agony, only to be swept back up by the strength of her ideas.

Origin is a film that feels exhilaratingly intelligent and wholly refreshing. Cinematic takes on creative or cerebral journeys, however imaginative, have commonly focused on white people, and almost always men (think Adaptation, Le Mépris, The Theory Of Everything), while it’s also notable that DuVernay has chosen to highlight such a recent text (a book you’ll want to rush out and read).

Oscar-nominated for her role in 2021’s King Richard, EllisTaylor does full justice to a beautifully written character, playing

a woman brought devastatingly low who still reaches the heights of her intellectual potential. The sensitivity she shows here really is exquisite and she’s well flanked by Bernthal and a scene-stealing Niecy Nash-Betts as Isabel’s straight-talking cousin, Marion. Meanwhile, actors of the calibre of Vera Farmiga, Audra McDonald, Connie Nielsen and Nick Offerman all appear in support.

Films dealing in big, challenging theories often struggle to pack a punch, with characters sounding like mouthpieces for the concepts in question, rather than human beings in all their strength and fallibility. That DuVernay manages to draw together multiple stories and keep Origin’s intellectual and emotional plates spinning is astonishing, as is her ability to impart ideas with the power to transform and unite. In a world that seems more fractured than ever, where people compete over injustices rather than seeking an end to all our suffering, this film matters.

Origin, GFT, Glasgow, Saturday 2, Tuesday 5 March, as part of Glasgow Film Festival; in cinemas from Friday 8 March.

COMEDY BILL BAILEY

Thoughtifier 

Bill Bailey’s latest entertaining and wide-ranging show finds the veteran comic leaning into his beatnik professorial persona. The scholarly aura of Thoughtifier is strong, as he feigns to puff and prod his smoking pipe for emphasis at subjects as weighty as nuclear fusion, the natural world, artificial intelligence, classical music and stoic philosophy. He offloads some grumbles at the top, concerning the tax inspector’s ineptitude, an erroneous announcement of his death on social media, and the absolute state of this Tory government, with his cartoonish visual descriptions of Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson etc matched by the self-mocking but droll caricatures he suggests of himself.

Chiefly though, he holds forth infectiously on science and the arts. Irrespective of his scepticism about AI’s capacity to surpass human creativity, he deploys it judiciously for some amusing visual window dressing. As always, music is the bassline of a Bailey performance; he unveils his varied collection of exotic instruments with the loving indulgence of a proud parent, ranging from a 3000-year-old Zimbabwean finger piano and Turkish saz, to Bluetoothenabled percussion balls and a laser harp rendering a disco classic.

Accompanied by opera singer Florence Hvorostovsky on occasion, the overall effect is of a potted history of human-made sound and ingenuity. So it’s a shame that, notwithstanding a few quickies and a superb bluegrassy encounter with Satan, few of the original songs and pastiches truly linger in the memory. Elsewhere, the tutorial back-and-forth he enjoys with an audience member about nuclear fission’s potential is fun and interesting enough. But it hardly justifies itself comedically as an early cornerstone of the show.

Don’t get me wrong, more than two hours of Bill Bailey’s light-hearted pedagogy is rarely less than diverting and delightful. But Thoughtifier is too broad, too scattergun in scope, when fewer ideas interrogated in greater detail would be more compelling. (Jay Richardson)

 Edinburgh Playhouse, Monday 11 March; reviewed at SEC, Glasgow.

ART EDUARDO PAOLOZZI

Paolozzi At 100 

The figure of Eduardo Paolozzi towers over the contemporary art world, much as his 1990s seven-metre tall sculpture ‘Vulcan’ does in its permanent residence in Modern Two’s café named after him. The Leithborn pop auteur’s presence is similarly embedded into Edinburgh’s cityscape, be it through public sculptures, the locally brewed beer that takes his name, Leith Athletic’s football shirt, or the magnificent recreation of his studio in Modern Two.

The latter is a perfect conduit for this centenary exhibition, which rolls out 60 works that not only channel the throwaway detritus of Paolozzi’s collages, but show how his ultra-modern designs made their mark beyond the gallery. This is spread across two ground-floor rooms, a library and a couple of corridor showcases. The first room, Paris & London, shows off 1950s collages, sculptures, screenprints and experiments with ink. The second room, Pattern & Print, leaps forward a couple of decades by way of tapestries, screenprints and plates. The library lays out fragments from his mosaic for Tottenham Court Road tube station.

The result is a multi-coloured machine-age selection box of imagery that animated its surroundings beyond gallery walls to become part of our everyday experience. This gives a glimpse into how Paolozzi mixed and matched the pop-culture clutter he was immersed in, defining its time while pointing to the brave new world ahead. (Neil Cooper)  National Galleries Of Scotland: Modern Two, Edinburgh, until Sunday 21 April.

5 STARS

From Marvel to Neil Gaiman, Norse mythology has loomed large in recent years. Now comes Ragnarok, a fantastic theatrical retelling of the Norse apocalypse by Tortoise In A Nutshell in collaboration with Figurteatret I Nordland. The show follows a young girl and her brother as they journey across the wasteland that was once Earth, hoping to find safety in their childhood home. Along the way, they must contend with not only the gods, but also natural disasters and angry, hungry people.

Ragnarok is an utterly unique multimedia experience, utilising film, theatre, music and puppetry to imagine the end of the world. Human characters are represented by clay figurines that could be straight from an archaeological dig, while the set evokes the eddic landscape by having Yggdrasil, the Old Norse tree which connects the worlds, as its focal point.

Ragnarok is an incredibly ambitious piece of theatre. The fourperson cast have the task of positioning the figurines and filming them perfectly in time with the pre-recorded dialogue. This film is then projected onto a large circular screen which doubles as the sun and moon. It’s a huge endeavour that pays off spectacularly at every turn. Each movement and camera angle are meticulously planned and executed, giving the impression of fate unfolding. The cast themselves seem to take on the role of gods, moving those figurines in accordance with a divinely ordained plot.

Visually, Ragnarok is a marvel, but it is the live soundtrack, performed and designed by Jim Harbourne, that gives this show its energy. There is something fittingly ritualistic about the music, from tribal drum beats to a dirge-like hurdy gurdy. It even becomes ethereal at times, using technical effects to layer lamenting voices on top of each other. The music is often paired with masked dance and animalistic movement at key points in Ragnarok’s timeline. In particular, one moment where the world-serpent releases its tail sends a shiver down the spine.

Beyond sheer technical mastery, Ragnarok succeeds perfectly in blending the real with the mythological. Scattered references to overconsumption in the modern day lend relevance to this apocalyptic vision without detracting from a universal feel, while grand themes like fate, transience and rebirth are expertly tied into the more grounded notions of loss and familial love. It’s ultimately a story of displacement, and Ragnarok’s mixture of legend and reality reminds us that our ancestors had the same anxieties and mourned the same tragedies as we do today. The resultant production is a true gem that manages to be terrifying, bleak, hopeful, thoughtful and heartbreaking all at once.

Ragnarok, Platform, Glasgow, Wednesday 27 & Thursday 28 March; reviewed at Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, as part of Manipulate.

revels in a terrifying yet thoughtful work

tackles huge themes with technical verve. Isy Santini

An ambitious and heartbreaking production, Ragnarok

theatre of the month

FILM

THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE

(Directed by Ilker Çatak) lllll

A calamitous attempt to do the right thing is at the heart of this painfully tense, psychologically tumultuous German drama from writer-director Ilker Çatak, in which a school becomes a hotbed of suspicion and shame. Nominated for Best International Feature at this year’s Academy Awards, The Teachers’ Lounge boasts a killer concept and propulsive, probing visuals. The film is fuelled by an outstanding performance from Leonie Benesch (who first grabbed our attention as the nanny in Michael Haneke’s 2009 masterpiece The White Ribbon) as Carla Nowak, an enthusiastic, idealistic teacher.

Yet to go the way of her more misanthropic colleagues, Carla is appalled at her school’s draconian response to a spate of thefts, with suspicion automatically falling on students, and one in particular. In a well-meaning attempt to get to the bottom of things, Carla sets about playing sleuth and through some ingenuity manages to identify a surprising suspect: the school’s seemingly benign administrator Friederike Kuhn (Eva Löbau). To complicate matters, Mrs Kuhn is also the mother of one of Carla’s most promising students, Oskar (Leonard Stettnisch), with the accusation and Mrs Kuhn’s reaction causing an explosive fall-out.

This is moreish, stimulating stuff, with Çatak and his fellow screenwriter Johannes Duncker using real-life incidents to craft convincing, discomforting moments that are ripe for post-film debate. Çatak keeps the stakes nail-bitingly high, while Judith Kaufmann’s confrontational cinematography ensures we are wedded to the action and to Carla’s increasingly heartpounding predicament. With the school’s Stasi-like culture of whispers and finger pointing, this provocative film plays powerfully on German history. The Teachers’ Lounge also acts as a microcosm of modern society, as its do-gooding protagonist does battle with a problematic, prejudiced system, before being dragged into the moral mire herself. (Emma Simmonds)

n GFT, Glasgow, Friday 1 & Saturday 2 March, as part of Glasgow Film Festival; in cinemas from Friday 12 April.

MUSIC L’RAIN lllll

‘There’s one rule for my show,’ said L’Rain as sound samples of barking dogs emanated from the speakers either side of her. ‘You have to be here.’ Her call to live in the moment barely proved necessary; once her band draws you into its knotted fusion of soul, jazz, rock and funk, the spell she casts seems unbreakable.

L’Rain (real name Taja Cheek) is touring in support of her superlative third album I Killed Your Dog, a genre-defying experimental work anchored by irresistible grooves and offkilter lyrics. Where that album excelled in the sharpness of brevity, here each song is expanded into a series of fluid jam sessions. The nightmare-tinged lull of the album’s title track is shot through with sharp stabs of electric guitar fuzz, while brief indie rocker ‘Pet Rock’ is blown up into a trek through acid jazz landscapes.

More accessible songs from the album such as ‘Uncertainty Principle’ and ‘5 To 8 Hours A Day (WWwaG)’ remain untouched by the full band’s desire to fuse and distort, their pop-soul edge providing a waypoint in the journey towards blissed-out decadence. Amid the clamour are L’Rain’s dynamite vocals, which soar in melodic beauty before breaking into a cacophonous scream or desperate yelp. An album and a live show are two very different beasts, and you won’t find tracks from I Killed Your Dog in their initial form. Instead, you’ll discover melodies and sounds that are ambitious and more invigorating than anything that can be committed to a recording. (Kevin Fullerton)

n Reviewed at The Hug And Pint, Glasgow.

THEATRE

ESCAPED ALONE

(Directed by Joanna Bowman) 

Escaped Alone depicts what appears to be a genteel afternoon chat between four women, all over 70 years old. Weaving through personal fears and global anxieties, Caryl Churchill’s script alternates monologues which develop apocalyptic scenarios and rambling conversations, hinting at mysteries and hidden tensions within this group and beyond their cloistered world. Although these monologues deal in explicit horror (humans buried alive, floods and winds that devastate civilisations), the tone is measured, with director Joanna Bowman avoiding melodrama and sensationalism, allowing words to carry the drama.

This is a play which provokes rather than makes explicit. Friendship between three of the women is occasionally challenged by their past history: one killed their husband while her friend questions whether it was self-defence, and another has a fear of cats which descends into a neurotic reflection on the animal’s capacity to hide itself indoors. Churchill elegantly captures the loops and twists of conversation, often threatening argument but reverting back to a placid chatter. Something sinister is lurking beneath the camaraderie, whether it is merely a sly dig at frailty or a looming catastrophe. But Churchill is happy to leave it undetermined.

The framing of their interactions by Mrs Jarrett (Blythe Duff), an outsider who joins this trio and sporadically offers blistering monologues of apocalypse, only adds to the mystery: is this her recollection, her attempt to make sense of an apparently innocuous meeting? Frustratingly opaque, the production lurches between two moods, deliberately flattening the contrast through its consistently polite presentation. Escaped Alone may feel passionless at times, but the taut script and four strong performances (every slight gesture evokes some hidden turmoil) offer an intellectually intriguing and dry reflection on how the threat of global disaster refracts into personal anxieties. (Gareth K Vile)

 Tron Theatre, Glasgow, until Saturday 9 March; Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Wednesday 13–Saturday 16 March.

FILM DUNE: PART TWO (Directed

by Denis Villeneuve) 

Denis Villeneuve aced the tricky part with the tantalising first half of his adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel Dune. Plot strands and characters previously omitted are revived to strengthen this continuation and conclusion, with Timothée Chalamet’s central performance as Paul Atreides one of many elements taken to another level.

Tracing a path from humble novice to uncertain prophet and full-blown messiah requires a transformative turn Chalamet ably delivers. With his mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) adopted by the Fremen of desert planet Arrakis, Atreides wins over Chani (Zendaya) and her fellow freedom fighters with humility, taming the mighty sandworms to ride them into battle and kick off a holy war against the spice-greedy House Harkonnen.

Seamlessly bolted on to the previous chapter, with a larger cast, wider focus and comprehensible, sublime action set-pieces, Dune: Part Two vindicates Villeneuve’s gamble to hold back key characters from the first film, notably Austin Butler’s fearsome Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen (Sting’s role in David Lynch’s version). Florence Pugh plays Princess Irulan, with Christopher Walken as her father Shaddam IV (ideal casting as the ‘Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe’).

With other worlds to conquer in Dune books and lore, this satisfying entry won’t be the last word on space rats and bagpipes, yet this instalment of the Emperor’s ‘friction with the Fremen’ works because it’s treated with such exotic gravity. Paul Atreides’ hero journey has been ripped off a thousand times since 1965, but Villeneuve’s stateof-the art Dune offers a unique brand of inscrutable alien cultures and other-worldly cinematic spice. (Eddie Harrison)

 In cinemas from Friday 1 March.

OTHER THINGS WORTH GOING OUT FOR

If you fancy getting out and about this month, there’s plenty culture to sample such as a surrealist Edinburgh Comedy Award winner from Oz, rising stars of the Scottish jazz scene, and an acclaimed US author discussing a beloved book series

ART

FRASER TAYLOR

The Glasgow artist and designer showcases a selection of his archive artworks, magazines, textile pieces and paintings, all created during the period of 1977–87, here under the umbrella of Instant Whip  Glasgow School Of Art, Saturday 16 March–Saturday 20 April.

COMEDY

SAM CAMPBELL

Surrealism and daftness by the trailer-load as the Australian victor of 2022’s Edinburgh Comedy Award brings us his Wobservations (see what we mean?).

 Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, Wednesday 6–Sunday 10 March; The Stand, Glasgow, Monday 11 March.

FILM

BERWICK FILM & MEDIA ARTS FESTIVAL

This year’s focused lmmaker is Basma Al-Sharif whose work explores the cyclical nature of political history and con icts, using satire and immersive art to tackle colonialism.

 Various venues, Thursday 7–Sunday 10 March.

MONSTER

After Broker, director Hirokazu Kore-eda is back with this moving tale of a single mother raising her son. The fact that Monster was Ryuichi Sakamoto’s nal movie score merely adds to the poignancy.

 In cinemas from Friday 15 March.

MUSIC

SNJO: NUAGE SOUNDS

A number of the brightest sparks in Scotland’s youthful jazz scene gather up for these concerts.

Among the talents on show are Helena Kay, Noushy, corto.alto and, of course, Fergus McCreadie.

 Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow, Saturday 2 March; Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Sunday 3 March.

SPRING EQUINOX

Orkney pianist Jennifer Austin marks the moment when the sun crosses the celestial equator going north by performing some original compositions accompanied with dramatic candlelight.

 St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh, Wednesday 20 March.

MADISON BEER

Dance yourself dizzy on this platinum-selling Grammy-nominated singer’s Spinnin tour as she takes her Silence Between Songs album out on the road and into the hearts of young folks everywhere.

 O2 Academy Glasgow, Sunday 24 March.

WILLIAM DOYLE

Springs Eternal is the eclectic art-pop chap’s new collection, as he continues to leave his East India Youth moniker behind him and forge deep into a near-future sonic residence.

 Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, Thursday 28 March.

TALKS

ARMISTEAD MAUPIN

He may be hurtling towards his 80th birthday, but the Washington-born novelist shows little sign of slowing down. The tenth instalment of his Tales Of The City series has just been published and fans will be keen to know what happens next.

 Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, Sunday 10 March.

Monster (and bottom from left), Madison Beer, Sam Campbell, Fraser Taylor

PICTURE: LE3AY

BANANARAMA

Not many bands survive the kind of traumatic and very public split that befell Bananarama in 1988 when Siobhan Fahey walked out after they performed at the BRIT Awards, later forming Shakespears Sister. Keren Woodward and Sara Dallin were left to lick their wounds and largely ploughed on as a duo, interrupted by an awkward yet mercifully brief reunion of the original trio in 2017. Glorious features 40 years of hits from their first Top 20 smash ‘Really Saying Something’, through to more recent tunes ‘Feel The Love’ and ‘Supernova’. If you want to hear the spiritual forebears of Girls Aloud, Sugababes and Spice Girls, Glorious is, as its title boldly suggests, the ultimate collection. (Brian Donaldson) n Glorious: The Ultimate Collection is released by London Records on Friday 8 March.

staying in

LOAN ARRANGERS

Neil Cooper chats to the father and daughter pairing whose Borrowed Nostalgia radio show dips into the past, present and possible future of Edinburgh’s gigging scene

When Rosalind Main and her dad Graham decided to start a radio programme about Edinburgh’s lost music venues, they had plenty material to play with. As an artist, model and researcher steeped in the local scene, Rosalind had been spoon-fed war stories of gigs past by her old man. The fact that Graham’s first-hand experience came not just from attending shows as a music-hungry teen dating back to the 1970s, but playing some of them too, as bass player with Auld Reekie’s premier art-punk combo Fire Engines.

The result is Borrowed Nostalgia, a mix of historical inquiry, anecdotes and top tunes associated with whichever venue is being investigated. ‘Growing up with dad’s music was really important,’ says Rosalind. ‘Driving round, he would point out places where he’d seen things; so I’d be listening to David Bowie in the car, and dad would point out the Empire Theatre, which is now the Festival Theatre, where Bowie played twice.’

The title of Borrowed Nostalgia comes from a line in ‘Losing My Edge’, LCD Soundsystem’s ironic 2002 pastiche of too-cool-for-school hipsters that finds James Murphy talking about ‘borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered 80s.’ Murphy’s closing litany of uber-cool artists even namechecks Fire Engines. Now four episodes in, the duo have looked at Leith Theatre, Tiffany’s nightclub, Empire Theatre and Caley Picture House. With the first having recently opened up again, the second demolished and flats built in its place, the third long re-established as a theatrical institution, and the fourth now a Wetherspoon, this selection to date is a marker of the loss or revival of Edinburgh venues across generations.

‘It’s been really enlightening for me,’ says Graham. ‘I’ve been looking at a lot of books about the architecture of the buildings, and it’s interesting what’s going on in the city just now because there’s a lot of building happening. It seems to be expanding, but culturally it’s contracting.’ While this makes it even more vital that lost spaces are historicised, and their social and artistic significance celebrated, it’s not all doom and gloom. ‘We’re going to be covering venues that still exist, like The Liquid Room and Summerhall, which have their own histories,’ Rosalind adds. ‘Borrowed Nostalgia is a melting pot of past, present and future, and a reminder that there’s plenty of things going on in Edinburgh all year round.’

 New episodes of Borrowed Nostalgia are available at ehfm.live/ residents/borrowed-nostalgia every second Monday of the month.

BINGE FEST

Our alphabetical column on viewing marathons reaches V

The most garlanded TV comedy actress in Emmy Awards history, Julia Louis-Dreyfus partly has a humble Glaswegian to thank for much of that glory. When Armando Iannucci left behind The Thick Of It to hit the US with Veep (NOW), no one could have imagined that this show would out-do and out-swear Malcolm Tucker and co. Yet, Louis-Dreyfus as hapless vice-president Selina Meyer put to bed any notion that she was a squeaky clean performer (on Curb Your Enthusiasm her ‘character’ spoke of a desire to move to HBO: ‘I wanna say fuck and cocksucker’), ably assisted on the profanity front by Timothy Simons, Hugh Laurie, Anna Chlumsky, Reid Scott, Patton Oswalt, and, most stupendously, Dan Bakkedahl as filth-warrior Congressman Roger Furlong. Not a single swear emerged from the mouths of Reeves and Mortimer during the 15 episodes of Vic Reeves Big Night Out (Channel 4). They were too busy being surreal for the sake of it in this over-the-top gameshow/variety showcase which launched the pair into TV stardom, and introduced us to dotty creations such as Judge Nutmeg, Les Facts, Graham Lister, The Man With The Stick, and Morrissey The Consumer Monkey (essentially a puppet with The Smiths frontman’s face which offered advice on shoddy or dangerous products). Quite probably the dictionary definition of ‘you had to be there.’ (Brian Donaldson)

 Other V binges: A Very British Coup (Channel 4), Vigil (BBC iPlayer), V (Prime Video).

first writes

In this Q&A, we throw some questions about ‘firsts’ at debut authors. This month we feature LA MacRae, author of And Now The Light Is Everywhere, an Argyll-set novel of family secrets and redemption

What’s the first book you remember reading as a child? The Katie Morag stories, written and beautifully illustrated by Mairi Hedderwick. How I longed for a Grannie Island of my own who was equally at home on her tractor, at the tiller of a boat, or hoicking her prize sheep from a bog and washing them in the bath. I’m now getting to introduce my own children to Struay and its inhabitants, and what a pure joy it is.

What was the book you read that made you decide to be a writer? It’s not really a matter of deciding so much as leaning ever closer to a flame. Discovering poetry in my teens really fed the fire. As Pablo Neruda describes it so very beautifully in ‘Poetry’: ‘and it was at that age . . . poetry arrived in search of me.’ I remember encountering this poem at the age of about 16 or so and thinking ‘yes, this is how it is.’

What’s your favourite first line in a book? ‘It was the day my grandmother exploded.’ So opens The Crow Road by the late, great Iain Banks. What a belter.

Which debut publication had the most profound effect on you? O Caledonia, Elspeth Barker’s first and only novel. If you haven’t read it yet, I envy you.

What’s the first thing you do when you wake up on a writing day?

Write. No getting out of bed, no nothing; just open the laptop and get going. With two tinies and a full-time job, a writing hour (never mind a day) is a rarity to be cherished. Besides, that liminal state between sleep and full wakefulness sometimes produces interesting results.

What’s the first thing you do when you’ve stopped writing for the day? Attend to whatever it is that’s forced me to stop: a wail, a yelp . . .

In a parallel universe where you’re the tyrant leader of a dystopian civilisation, what’s the first book you’d burn? My teenage diary.

What’s the first piece of advice you’d offer to an aspiring novelist? Write the book you want to read. Starting will be the easy part, so finish it; even if it’s a sair fecht.

And Now The Light Is Everywhere is published by Hodder & Stoughton on Thursday 7 March.

GAMES DRAGON’S DOGMA 2

The original Dragon’s Dogma, released in 2012, was a quirky fantasy action RPG with a distinctly Japanese flavour and directly inspired by game director Hideaki Itsuno’s other big series, Devil May Cry. Eight years later it was adapted into a passable Netflix show, and now a full sequel is about to launch. Set in a sprawling open world four times larger than the original game, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is packed with the usual mythical creatures, ancient ruins and fantastical quests.

Players take on the role of a hero mysteriously named ‘Arisen’ who must journey across the land while attempting to defeat a pursuing dragon (echoes of Skyrim, although this features just one beast) while also helping to settle a conflict between two warring factions: very much your typical fantasy multi-tasking. Just like the first game, players will be accompanied by ‘Pawns’, non-playable characters who assist in combat, navigation and general play.

Thanks to the astonishing success of last year’s Baldur’s Gate 3 and its enormous, almost impossibly reactive script, there’s a real appetite in gaming for copious discourse, and it’s hoped that this game’s expansive dialogue will help bring the world to life; the aim is very much to make players feel like they’re adventuring with pals. There’s some big RPG competition this year, including recent fellow Japanese releases Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth. If it can nail its environment, combat and innovative companion system, Dragon’s Dogma 2 has the potential to triumph. (Murray Robertson)

 Released by Capcom on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, Friday 22 March.

PREVIEWS

smubla • albums •

Yard Act are shifting gear with a second album that hops off the post-punk wave and broadens their musical horizons.

Kevin Fullerton speaks to bassist and co-founder Ryan Needham about exploring new sounds and putting politics on the backburner

Change is in the air for Yard Act. As with many bands before them, the Mercury-nominated Leeds lads have found themselves pondering one question: when you emerge fully formed, where do you go next? The answer, as band co-founder Ryan Needham insists, was to go crate-digging. Remi Kabaka Jr, who produced the album, ‘spotted a few of the things that we were influenced by and brought tons of records down to the studio, and we did a deep dive into loads of stuff. He gave us the confidence to fully go for ideas and not hold back.’

The result is Where’s My Utopia?, an album that revels in collaging classic hip hop, Afrobeat, Nile Rodgers-tinged disco, acid jazz, found sound, and ragged indie pop, alongside vocalist James Smith’s wry and intricate spoken word. In this game of musical free association, the wiry post-punk of their 2022 debut The Overload rarely rears its head, making the echo of ‘it’s a bit like The Fall, innit?’ that hounded them a few years ago far less likely. ‘A lot of artists are very reactive to what they’ve been lumped in with,’ says Needham. ‘There are a few songs on our first album that I would consider post-punk; those with spiky basslines and spoken word. But there’s stuff on the back-end of that first album which a true post-punk head would be offended to call it that. This one feels a little bit more like a reaction to something that you’ve done previously, which I guess arguably makes it more post-punk.’

Beyond its fluid sonic environs, Smith’s lyrics on Where’s My Utopia? have shifted from the broad social archetypes and swingeing satire that typified The Overload into personal, inward-looking meanders through his youth and daily life. One highlight comes in the form of ‘Blackpool Illuminations’, a seven-minute therapy session about a beach holiday turned sour; the track is at turns sweet and pointedly funny in its observations on the nature of autobiography in songwriting (‘I just didn’t want to burden anyone with the truth,’ claims Smith when a disembodied voice on the track asks if he’s making his story up).

More pointedly, it marks a clean break from the satirical spark of The Overload. While not wholly absent from the album, Smith’s political observations are, as Needham points out, ‘more abstract and oblique.’ Like their more aggressive peers Idles, Yard Act are as burnt-out from the political landscape as anyone else, feeling more comfortable mining universal themes of regret and grief. ‘Utopia’s a bit more philosophically political,’ states Needham. ‘We had a few demos about UK politics, but James felt it was a bit disingenuous because we had taken our eye off the ball in that regard. Without sounding like privileged prats, we’ve been touring the world for two years and weren’t as engaged politically as we’d been previously. Weirdly, as this album lands, we’ve got that fire again so we’ll probably talk about politics on the road.’

Where’s My Utopia? is released by Island on Friday 1 March; Yard Act play O2 Academy Glasgow on Friday 15 March.

Measure for pleasure

In this column, we ask a pod person about the ‘casts that mean a lot to them. This month, it’s Kiri Pritchard-McLean, the writer, comedian and ‘clothes magpie’ whose All Killa No Filla (in which she muses upon a mutual fascination for serial killers with co-host Rachel Fairburn) has notched up ten years in your ears and is about to hit the road

my perfect podcast

TV PALM ROYALE

‘All I ever wanted was to be a somebody in this world. But there’s a catch when a woman wants to be a somebody . . . and that catch is everyone else.’ This voiceover begins a glossy, glitzy and glamorous opening episode of the Palm Beach-set comedy-drama which arrives in 1969 with America edging towards the culture wars which continue to rage today. That this narration is delivered over images of its speaker Maxine (Kristen Wiig) possibly in trouble underwater suggests that things might not turn out for the best.

Is she drowning or just having a vigorous paddle? Has she already died, and are we in Desperate Housewives deceased-narrator territory? And who among the wealthy sorts that hang out at the exclusive Palm Royale club might be responsible for her suffering a watery demise? There are plenty suspects to choose from: Allison Janney is the humblebragging anti-cancer campaigner Evelyn; Leslie Bibb as Dinah the less-than-loyal wife of an ambassador; or maybe even Ricky Martin’s Robert, a Korean War veteran and Palm Royale security guard who is clearly fed up with Maxine after the first five minutes.

This light-hearted romp with very jaunty animated opening credits has dashes of Only Murders In The Building and splashes of Why Women Kill where dastardly deeds are done with a smile and a wink, and where no one needs to clean up the bloody mess left behind by a gruesome crime. Maybe in a world being constantly bombarded by horrendous real-life terrors, this is the kind of fictional violence viewers can more readily tolerate right now in the comfort of their living rooms.

(Brian Donaldson)

 Starts on Apple TV+, Thursday 20 March.

Which podcast educates you? You’re Wrong About. I love it. It’s a perfect mix of pure facts and diligent journalism, and unabashed worship of pop culture. Start with the five-part episode on Princess Diana and thank me later.

Which podcast makes you laugh? Like Minded Friends with Suzi Ruffell and Tom Allen. They’re both so charming and funny, and this podcast, described as ‘white noise for gays,’ is my go-to when I’m cleaning the house and need some delightful distraction.

Which podcast makes you sad or angry? Crime Analyst. I don’t listen to many truecrime podcasts but Laura Richards’ one is so well researched and meticulous that it’s astounding. It can leave me equal parts furious and depressed that victims (women) are still being so let down by society and police.

Which podcast is your guilty pleasure? The most guilty thing I can think of (cos I have largely exquisite taste) is when I listen to my own podcast. This is vile, but sometimes I listen back to episodes of Who Are You Wearing? but this is testament to the quality and insight of the guests as opposed to the quantity of my ego . . . I hope.

Tell us someone who currently doesn’t have a podcast but totally should. And why do you think their one would be amazing? I’m in a sketch group called Tarot, and Ben Rowse, who is the other writer and director, is SO FUNNY and barely anyone knows that. I’m loathe for another white man in comedy to have a podcast but I will make an exception for Ben.

Pitch us a new podcast idea in exactly 17 words I Don’t Remember That in which people sit down and talk to their school bullies. Juicy, right?

All episodes of All Killa No Filla can be found at allkillano lla.com; the live show is at King’s Theatre, Glasgow, Saturday 30 March, as part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

PICTURE: DREW FORSYTH

Big Thief leader Adrianne Lenker is back with another storming solo collection. As Megan Merino discovers, Bright Future may well be the most apt album title of 2024

Creaks of chairs, brushing of fabric, a subtle laugh as instruments find their place. What we hear in the opening seconds of Bright Future seems to be Adrianne Lenker inviting us into an intimate moment between friends. Recorded at an analogue studio in the autumn of 2022, what has now become the Big Thief frontwoman’s latest solo album was created in a serene, rural environment devoid of expectation.

At Lenker’s invitation, Josefin Runsteen (violin), Nick Hakim (piano) and Mat Davidson (guitar) came together under the watchful eye of engineer Philip Weinrobe who was ready to capture whatever came out of those few days. The imprint of surrounding woodlands, crackling firewood and quiet contemplation is palpable throughout the album.

Opening track ‘Real House’ is a stream-of-consciousness introduction to the record’s key themes of love, the cycle of life and Lenker’s relationship to nature.

Existential dread on a personal and global level is explored in ‘Donut Seam’ (‘this whole world is dying / don’t it seem like a good time for swimming? / before all the water disappears’), alongside quiet epiphanies about simple joys. ‘We could watch a garden grow / we could come in from the cold,’ sings Lenker in ‘Fool’. In contrast to the pure folky sounds of songs like ‘Sadness As A Gift’, ‘No Machine’ and ‘Free Treasure’, ‘Fool’ has interlocking layers of guitar that warble and bend around fuzzy vocals, inhabiting the same psychedelia-infused universe as tracks like ‘Time Escaping’ and ‘Spud Infinity’ from Big Thief’s 2022 album Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You

An early version of ‘Vampire Empire’ (released as a Big Thief single last year) features halfway through, replacing drums and electric guitars with the rustic acoustic palette used throughout Bright Future, before fading out into piano ballad ‘Evol’. The relentless wordplay of its lyrics (‘love spells evol backwards people / words back words backwards are lethal’) sees Lenker force us to slow down and consider each line. The short but lyrically dense ‘Candleflame’ follows, before lullaby-esque ‘Cell Phone Says’ and banjo-led ‘Already Lost’ gently deposit us at the album’s heartwrenching finale, ‘Ruined’.

Lenker is a known master of capturing emotional vulnerability and the imperfections that go along with it. Yet, this is not what makes the album her best yet. In that way in which crops take on the taste of the land and weather surrounding them, she seems to have wholly succeeded in yielding the spoils of her labour. These fruits from this latest harvest have never been sweeter.

Bright Future is released by 4AD on Friday 22 March.

album of the month

REVIEWS

PODCASTS DON’T LOOK NOW (Directed by Sally Avens) 

Arriving as part of Radio 4’s Daphne du Maurier: Double Exposure season comes this adaptation of Don’t Look Now, which still stands as one of her most famous works. Much of that fame, of course, comes from the distinctive 1973 film adaptation by Nicolas Roeg, starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie as a grief-stricken married couple holidaying in Venice. If you’ve seen Roeg’s film, it’s hard not to shake it from your mind as you listen to dramatist Katie Hims’ take on du Maurier’s 1971 short story. In particular, the sensual love scene, so beautifully shot by Roeg, lingers when you hear John (Jamie Parker) and Laura (Aisling Loftus) decide to go to bed before their dinner reservation.

Nevertheless, Hims and director Sally Avens do a fine job of conjuring the eerie nature of du Maurier’s story, with John and Laura haunted by the death of their daughter Christine, who drowned some time earlier at their English country home. This trip to Venice is meant to be restorative; but then they meet two women in a restaurant, one of whom is a blind psychic who claims to ‘see’ their child. While John dismisses them as fakes, he and Laura are soon left increasingly disturbed.

Naturally, a radio production will never enjoy the visual benefits of showing Venice’s winding alleyways, or the atmosphere that both the novel and film conveyed. But thanks to smart sound effects and piano music ably played by Ian Dunnett Jnr (also appearing as the detective), this production does its best in that regard. The subtle performances from Loftus and Parker also help bring out the piece’s psychological complexities, as the still-grieving Laura and then John begin to believe the presence of their daughter in Venice. The effect is chilling. (James Mottram)

 BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds, Sunday 3 March.

BOOKS

RITA BULLWINKEL

Headshot (Daunt Books) 

Over two days, the sun rises and falls above Bob’s Boxing Palace in Reno, Nevada. While the Daughters Of America Cup means everything to the eight young women competing for victory, it matters little to anyone else. On one level, Rita Bullwinkel’s debut novel charts this tournament in linear style. However, it refuses to be constrained by structure or the concept of time itself. The narrative focus freezes then pivots, travels back through memory and trauma, then forward to the futures these girls are destined for. Paragraphs extend over pages or are completed in a single sentence; a solitary thought or moment, trapped in amber.

This all-seeing, god-like narrative voice remains in the detached third person throughout. The story is devoid of dialogue, with every thought internalised rather than spoken out loud. Despite the limitations this could impose in terms of pacing and emotional punch, it’s a stylistic gamble that largely pays off. This is due to Bullwinkel’s ability to make each well-formed character an authentic and individual life, even though they’re framed by the four corners of the same ring.

Individually, this is essentially literary portraiture. But through the combined lives of these eight young women, Headshot builds to more than the sum of their parts. Important themes and commentary begin to form through its core. Sexism is one, reflected in the indifference these female boxers endure. Their achievements are undervalued and unrewarded. The damaged bodies they carry into later life become ordinary and disconnected from the extraordinary struggles and triumphs inside the ropes through which they were forged. (Alan Bett) 

Published on Thursday 28 March.

ALBUMS

KAISER CHIEFS

Kaiser Chiefs’ Easy Eighth Album (V2 Records Benelux) 

Don’t get too excited about the seemingly audacious pairing of indie veterans Kaiser Chiefs and super-producer Nile Rodgers. The latter has foraged the celebratory, stomping chorus of ‘Feeling Alright’ to provide the post-covid boost which opens Kaiser Chiefs’ Easy Eighth Album, a jokey title they might come to regret, given the throwaway, threadbare nature of following track ‘Beautiful Girl’.

Rudimental’s Amir Amor takes the production reins for this album, as the Leeds quintet steer an outright pop course through jolly Eurovision boyband confection ‘How 2 Dance’, burnished pop-rocker ‘Sentimental Love Songs’ (which is saved by some stratospheric guitar lines), and ‘The Job Centre Shuffle’, a sprinkling of indie-funk ingredients in search of a song. Recent single ‘Burning In Flames’ is more cohesive with its ecstatic dance feel, while ‘Reasons To Stay Alive’ adopts a Goldfrapp-like industrial glamdisco groove; and ‘Jealousy’ nods to The Housemartins’ ‘Happy Hour’ but with a far more processed sound.

The cocky pop of ‘Noel Groove’ leads to a sleek rockier chorus. Frontman Ricky Wilson deploys his effective higher register, and it’s 2005 all over again as The Cribs pitch up on backing vocals. Anyone hoping for a sniff of a song as good as ‘I Predict A Riot’ will be sorely disappointed. Closing track ‘The Lads’, a non-laddy celebration of male friendship, is among the stronger melodies here, but even with bonus chanty chorus, it’s not such an illustrious way to conclude Kaiser Chiefs’ underwhelming eighth album. (Fiona Shepherd)

TV THE COMPLETELY MADEUP ADVENTURES OF DICK TURPIN (Apple TV+) 

One-off curios notwithstanding, Noel Fielding’s performance as the legendary Dick Turpin is the Mighty Boosh star’s first scripted comedy in a decade. And while his high-cheekboned highwayman owes something to Adam Ant’s flamboyant precedent, this lavish six-part series essentially transplants the vain, loveable idiocy of his Vince Noir persona to Georgian England. Chiefly scripted by Jon Brittain and Richard Naylor, this is an enjoyably anachronistic romp that finds the vegan, image-obsessed Dick stumbling into a life of confounding villainy, and clumsily holding up stagecoaches with his irrepressible doofus cheerfulness.

Alongside fine support from Ellie White, Marc Wootton and newcomer Duayne Boachie as his equally hapless gang, with Asim Chaudhry, Mark Heap, Joe Wilkinson and Fielding’s brother Michael among other eccentric regulars, it’s the baddies that steal the show. Tamsin Greig is smilingly psychopathic as the head of a shadowy crime cabal, with Greg Davies and Jessica Hynes having great fun in their guest roles. Best of all, though, is Hugh Bonneville as Dick’s nemesis, the thief-taker Jonathan Wilde, struggling to maintain his nefarious enterprise and resist Dick’s charm while parenting his ever-present son.

A who’s who of comedy talent popping up in cameos never ceases to tickle, and the show successfully marries the production sheen and unhurried narrative arcs of a US streaming service with the cosy nonsense of a British period sitcom. You care about the main characters but don’t invest too deeply in them. Regrettably, Dolly Wells’ crucial role as a proto-tabloid reporter inflating Dick’s reputation is under-written. And Fielding, stuck in his Noir groove, is rather too predictable and invariably overshadowed by more charismatic antagonists. When Sex Education’s Connor Swindells arrives as an even flashier rival highwayman, you’re forced to conclude that he’d likely be a more compelling central focus. (Jay Richardson)  Starts on Friday 1 March.

 Released on Friday 1 March.

Pictured: The Wind (1928) Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Collection

tv of the month

Largely unclassifiable, The Way has three dynamic talents driving its story of a broken community and a country at war with itself. Kelly Apter takes one step back and wonders if such unlikely horrors might visit us sooner than we think

Ordinarily, programme-makers are thrilled when their output proves timely and taps into the zeitgeist. But when Port Talbot steelworks announced its plan to shut two blast furnaces, with a loss of almost 3000 jobs, a month before The Way aired, there was no cause for celebration. Instead, it just proved how depressingly prescient this three-part drama is. A long-time passion project and directorial debut for actor Michael Sheen, who brought in screenwriter James Graham and documentary-maker Adam Curtis to beef out its creative credentials, The Way defies classification.

Presenting initially as a gritty working-class drama, it goes on to encompass elements of fantasy, a damning indictment of refugee policy, a dig at the manipulative power of social media, and even a dash of familial sitcom. Sheen, who was born in Port Talbot and recently returned to live there, clearly has several layers of skin in this game. The love he feels for his home town is the engine that drives proceedings, helping to capture the decades-old symbiotic relationship between its community and the imposing steelworks that loom large over them.

Graham, who is best known for penning Quiz and Sherwood, is the petrol in this tank, lubricating the harsh metal with characters that are soft at the core, while Curtis, with his searing non-fiction eye, adds much to its style and shape as we bounce from dramatic scenes to archive footage

to moments captured via CCTV. However, the almost laughable central premise will cause an inevitable divide among viewers; we’re used to seeing tragic images of refugees fleeing their homeland via dangerous, sometimes fatal methods. But rarely, if ever, do those in cosy UK homes imagine meeting the same fate.

The Way turns all that on its head when civil unrest in Port Talbot spills out into the rest of Wales, leaving the country’s residents heading for the border with England. Denied access and met with disdain, our central family of four (peacekeeper dad, agitator mum, police-sergeant daughter, and drug-dealer son), already at odds with each other, have to find a way to mend their own fences before vaulting any real ones.

A strong cast, including Sheen himself as the ghost of the activist granddad, makes emotional investment easy. The deep-fake viral video that lands the son in trouble may seem implausible, and the ‘Welsh Catcher’ with his Chitty Chitty Bang Bang cage is intentionally over the top. But then the whole story feels improbable until you read about the steelworks actually closing. Flip the globe to see what’s happening elsewhere and it all edges closer to feeling disturbingly real.

The third and final episode of The Way airs on BBC One, Monday 4 March; all episodes available now on BBC iPlayer.

REVIEWS

ALBUMS JUDAS PRIEST

Invincible Shield (Columbia Records) lllll

It’s difficult not to like Rob Halford, the prima donna-voiced frontman of Birmingham metal stalwarts Judas Priest. One of the few openly gay figures in heavy music, Halford has long been coaxing generations of misanthropic straight men into head-to-toe leather as a sign of their virility, while bringing Queen-style operatics to songs laden with devil’s-trident riffs and doublebass drum. A year before coming out in 1998, he performed ‘Breaking The Law’, Priest’s most famous song, with queercore band Pansy Division. In a 2020 interview he approved of the track being played over stolen NYPD radios by George Floyd protestors.

What of Invincible Shield, the group’s first studio album in six years? Perhaps its most striking feature to anyone not versed in their back catalogue is the political slant of several tracks, including opener ‘Panic Attack’. A longtime US resident, Halford has previously described the social messaging of his lyrics as ‘concealed by smoke and mirrors.’ But the smoke is pretty thin around lines like ‘the clamour and the clatter of incensed keys / can bring a nation to its knees / on the wings of a lethal icon, bird of prey / it’s a sign of the times when bedlam rules / when the masses condone pompous fools.’

Here and elsewhere (see the title track and mid-paced banger ‘Devil In Disguise’) there are references to online misinformation, barricades and walls, and populist demagogues. Halford stated his opposition to Donald Trump in 2018, citing an intolerance of LGBT+ communities, so is it fanciful to consider this release a clarion call ahead of the upcoming US elections?

In any case, Halford has described Invincible Shield as relatively musically adventurous, with more freewheeling guitar solos (there are lots of those) and less reliance on verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure. The album is overlong and feels more like a collection of individual songs than a coherent whole, but it packs a punch and induces a head-nodding trance in several places.

And again, who wouldn’t love Rob Halford? (Greg Thomas)

n Released on Friday 8 March.

PODCASTS THE POLYESTER PODCAST (Polyester) lllll

Despite consistently releasing episodes for almost four years, The Polyester Podcast was recently thrust into the spotlight when a short clip of hosts Ione Gamble and Gina Jones’ biting critique of Saltburn began circulating on social media. The podcast, with its kitschy, pink aesthetic and plastic-fantastic name promises to ‘dissect the discourse on a weekly basis.’

Covering topics ranging from the merits of gossip to the ubiquity of Stanley Cups, each episode offers a well-researched, feminist examination of our media-saturated zeitgeist’s latest obsession. The issue, unfortunately, is that The Polyester Podcast is desperately trying to carve out a niche for itself in an overpopulated market.

Its appeal only extends to those deeply entrenched in the language of the internet. For those that are, The Polyester Podcast has an addictive quality not dissimilar to being locked in a TikTok doomscroll. To the technologically uninitiated, it feels like eavesdropping on two strangers speaking in a puzzling dialect. Gamble and Jones are perfectly serviceable, and the pair have an easy chemistry, but neither project a particularly charismatic presence for their listeners.

With a strict adherence to the weekly release schedule, a zippy episode length works in its favour, but its content predictably rehashes the latest online fad. As its name suggests, this is fast fashion in podcast form. Regardless, much like the social media it is so absorbed in, The Polyester Podcast is a comforting diversion. (Eve Connor)

n New episodes available every Monday at polyesterzine.com

OTHER THINGS WORTH STAYING IN FOR

A packed month of things to do indoors or consume on your travels including a Glasgow band’s curiously titled return and a psychological horror survival video game, while two stars from a classic US sitcom host their own podcast

ALBUMS

XMAL DEUTSCHLAND

These post-punk forerunners allow us to dip into a vivid back catalogue with the release of their collected singles from 1981–82. On the very same day, and through the same label, frontwoman Anja Huwe releases her debut solo album, Codes

n Sacred Bones, Friday 8 March.

UNION OF KNIVES

This Glasgow electro-rock trio bring us an unofficial follow-up to 2021’s Endless From The Start with the similarly titled Start From The Endless. Confused? You might be.

n Three Hands Records, Tuesday 19 March.

FOUR TET

The electronic artist also known as Kieran Hebden unleashes a new set of tunes. Three is his first album since material he released on Christmas Day in 2020 (probably just trying to cheer us up back then).

n Text, Friday 15 March.

BOOKS

LIZ JENSEN

A founder member of Extinction Rebellion’s Writers Rebel, Jensen’s memoir about parental loss, Your Wild And Precious Life, zeroes in on grief, hope and, yes, rebellion.

n Canongate, Thursday 7 March.

GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

Until August is a recently discovered novel from the Nobel Prize-winner about a happily married wife who visits the same bar in a sultry lagoon every year simply to pick up a man. The book slowly untangles the mysteries of her love.

n Viking, Tuesday 12 March.

GAMES

OUTLAST TRIALS

A first-person psycho-horror survival video game which acts as the prequel to two previous Outlast affairs. This one revolves around a mysterious Cold War experiment. Enjoy those night-vision goggles.

n Red Barrels, Tuesday 5 March.

PODCASTS

THE HISTORY OF CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM

With the final season of Larry David’s near-perfect sitcom well underway, fans should dig into this podcast hosted by two of the show’s stars, Susie Essman and Jeff Garlin.

n New episodes widely available every Thursday.

TV MANHUNT

Certainly not the first TV programme to have that title. But it’s most likely the only one about the search for Abe Lincoln’s assassin. A superb cast includes Tobias Menzies, Anne Dudek, Anthony Boyle, Patton Oswalt and Lili Taylor.

n Apple TV+, Friday 15 March.

ROAD HOUSE

Directed by Doug Swingers Liman, this UFC-based action film is a reimagining of the original 1989 movie, this time around starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Jessica Williams and, excitingly, Conor McGregor.

n Prime Video, Thursday 21 March.

Union Of Knives (and bottom from left), The History Of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Liz Jensen, Manhunt

back

THE Q& A WITH SHAUN KEAVENY

Who would you like to see playing you in the movie about your life? Who do you think the casting people would choose? Mark Ruffalo. Peter Kay.

What’s the punchline to your favourite joke? ‘Defence Secretary Grant Shapps.’

If you were to return in a future life as an animal, what would it be? The drummer from The Muppets.

If you were playing in an escape room, name two other people (wellknown or otherwise) you’d recruit to help you get out? I’d only need our Orms (my uncle). He is by some distance the most practical man on the planet.

When was the last time you were mistaken for someone else and what were the circumstances? Apart from the almost weekly shouts of ‘oi! Ryan Gosling!’, I actually did get mistaken once for Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson at a BBC reception.

What’s the best cover version ever? Our old band Mosque used to do a superb version of the Rainbow kids-TV theme tune segued into ‘No More Heroes’ by The Stranglers.

Whose speaking voice soothes your ears? If I am feeling really sad or stressed, I simply go on YouTube and listen to a compilation of Richard Briers’ TV-ad voiceovers from the 70s and 80s.

Tell us something you wish you had discovered sooner in life? I have ADHD!

When the curtain came down on his popular Radio 6 Music show, Shaun Keaveny stepped into the podcast world to deal with life’s minutiae for a Daily Grind. In our Q&A, he lets rip on supermarket lasagne, phallically titled tribute acts, and the dulcet tones of Richard Briers

Describe your perfect Saturday evening? If I can’t be out on a bi-annual romantic meal with my wife, I would say: kids in bed, strong stout, music doc, strumming a guitar.

If you were a ghost, who would you haunt? Probably Richard Dawkins for a laugh.

If you could relive any day of your life, which one would it be? Any of the Christmas Days I’ve spent with all my family and kids.

What’s your earliest recollection of winning something? I won a Smarties Easter Egg for best fancy dress at St Gabriel’s Primary School dressed as Dracula.

Did you have a nickname at school that you were ok with? And can you tell us a nickname you hated? Joe Hankinson used to call me ‘Keato’. He did it with love though. He was also fucking terrifying so I wouldn’t have remonstrated with him either way.

If you were to start a tribute act to a band or singer, who would it be in tribute to and what would it be called? O-Nob, a tribute to the music of Bono (don’t get me wrong, I love the guy).

When were you most recently astonished by something? The price of a supermarket lasagne.

What’s the most hi-tech item in your home? Electronic drum kit.

What tune do you find it impossible not to get up and dance to, whether in public or private? ‘Freedom’ by Wham!

Which famous person would be your ideal holiday companion? Joe Lycett.

As an adult, what has a child said to you that made a powerful impact? My older sons bought me a lovely ceramic coffee cup with the word ‘wanker’ artfully embossed on it.

Tell us one thing about yourself that would surprise people? I am not dead or in jail.

When did you last cry? I am a big crier. Last time was yesterday at an episode of The Bear. Even thinking about the episode of The Royle Family when Denise is about to have the baby and talking to Jim in the bathroom . . . I totally lose it.

What’s a skill you’d love to learn but have never got round to? Dry stone walling.

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? Downstairs bathroom is a literal shithole.

If you were selected as the next 007, where would you pick as your first luxury destination for espionage? Batley.

Shaun Keaveny’s Daily Grind podcast airs on Radio X.

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Marking the first exhibition of Edinburgh gallery Collective in its 40th anniversary, Elisa Giardina Papa brings us U Scantu: A Disorderly Tale. First displayed at the 2022 Venice Biennale, ceramic sculptures and a large-scale video installation explore the Sicilian myth of ‘donne di fora’ (‘women from the outside and beside themselves’).

There may be many more Godzilla films than King Kong movies (37 v 12 at the last count), but it’s nice that those two big guys can reach an agreement and be on the same side for The New Empire. The scaly/hairy chaps combine to take on a vast but as yet unrevealed threat to the world. The MonsterVerse is alive and roaring.

The humble double act may be largely out of comedy fashion, but while the likes of Grubby Little Mitts are around, there may still be hope. Rosie Nicholls and Sullivan Brown appear at the Glasgow International Comedy Festival with their current show Hello, Hi and a new work-in-progress affair full of songs, sketches and silliness.

PICTURE: CRAIG FULLER