Author: The Reviews Hub - Scotland

The Charlatans take to the stage to a massive roar from their adoring crowd.  They have a backdrop of graphics that change with each song and a great light show to show off these marvellous musicians – especially the wonder of Tim Burgess’ “dad dancing”.  Is it just that he knows we all adore him, whatever he does, or has he actually become a caricature of himself?  Either way his dancing is mesmerizing in its uniqueness. At one point the back screen shows the band from back in the 90s.  Looking at the difference from the young lads’ faces to…

Book: Joe Penhall Music and Lyrics: Ray Davies Director: Edward Hall The Kinks were probably the Pulp of the 1960s. Never quite reaching the same heights sales wise as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones then, or Blur and Oasis  thirty years later, but making the most consistently interesting music, and treading a path where failure and emotional breakdown always sat close to success and hedonistic excess. Mirroring Oasis, however, the relationship between an older brother who joined, and took over, his younger brother’s band, is also a central part of their story. Joe Penhall’s book brings older brother Ray…

Timed to coincide with last year’s Oasis reunion and tapping into a broader wave of nostalgia for the 1990s, Marc Burrows’ tour is a fond reminiscence of the formative music that shaped the 45-year-old, his enthusiasm exemplified by, and indeed, amplified when he straps on his Union Jack guitar. However, this part of the show emphasises how backward-looking and, frankly, plagiarising the era was. And Burrows is sufficiently clear-eyed and cynical enough about Britpop to only occasionally stray into hagiography, even if he semi-seriously underpins his pop culture history with a great man theory that declares three of its central…

Book: Des McAnuff and Robert Cary Director: Des McAnuff Des McAnuff, the Tony and Olivier Award winning director best known for Jersey Boys and Ain’t Too Proud, is no stranger to the jukebox musical, and The Ballad of Johnny and June bears his fingerprints from the first scene. The creative burden of any jukebox musical falls heavily on the book writer, who must turn familiar songs into a coherent dramatic structure rather than a concert with dialogue. As co-writer and director here, McAnuff attempts to do exactly that with the life story of country music’s most famous couple. As its…

Writer: Frances Poet  Director: Jemima Levick The 1981 Lee Jeans sit-in remains a landmark moment in Scottish industrial history—a David vs Goliath battle in which 140 workers occupied their Greenock factory for seven months to save their livelihoods. In Stand and Deliver, writer Frances Poet brings this defiance to the stage using a meta-theatrical storytelling device that invites the audience to reflect on the legacy of the struggle, even if the narrative takes some time to gain its full momentum. Direction from Jemima Levick is assured, navigating an effective set that, paired with splendid lighting design, captures the grit and…

Having directly addressed his drug addiction in his last show, John Mulaney makes only wry, passing reference to it in Mister Whatever. However, this includes the inherently funny disclosure that this vulnerable multi-millionaire and provider for a big extended family is only allowed to carry $200 in his wallet by his wife and the bank cashiers who must abide by her wishes. So when Mulaney sardonically snarls at one point that he’s “not such a good guy, everyone knows that now”, the sense of freedom he’s conveying at five years sober is palpable. The American stand-up’s observational and storytelling skill…

When comic performers embark on “audience with” tours, they usually have a different interviewer in every city, affording the chat a semblance of freshness. Gregor Fisher and theatre director Nigel West go back a few years and have shorthand, no doubt cemented after the Rab C Nesbitt star appeared in West’s musical version of The Wizard of Oz. But the pair have been reminiscing about Fisher’s life for eight years, even as Covid delayed the majority of their live dates. And here, at the final show for a good while, until a one-hour version arrives at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe,…

Writer: John le Carré Adaptor: David Eldridge Director: Jeremy Herrin Published in 1963, a year after the Berlin Wall divided Germany and the world into two halves, and also a year after Sean Connery first starred as James Bond, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold was the gritty, realistic counterpart to Ian Fleming’s glossy version of life in the secret service. Writing from first hand experience, John Le Carré created a work that was fiction drawn from fact, depicting Special Agents and their handlers as actors moving in shadows, constantly playing roles that were anything other than glamorous…