Back from a mini tour of Yorkshire and Stockport and cheering for supporting act Indignation Meeting
History from below
ALISTAR FINDLAY is mesmerised by this multiple ‘Visions of Scotland’ assault on the audience’s eyes and senses
martin
The Star's critics ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA reviews I Am Love, The Penguin Lessons, Freaky Tales, The Thicket
MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
JOHN GREEN relishes photography that unfolds a longstanding and poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production that panders – if inadvertently – to Western prejudice against China
Through the Shortbread Tin
National Theatre of Scotland
A BRILLIANT new play written and performed by the Scottish poet Martin O’Connor probes his early years with his Gaelic-speaking grandfather through his later reading of James MacPherson’s translated epic poem by a 3rd century mythic Scottish bard called Ossian (1760), denounced as a literary “hoax” and ”fake” by Dr Samuel Johnson.
It is “a very thick book,” Martin confides, giving his Edinburgh audience last week a knowing look, about a hundred or so, whom he asks outright how many have heard of Ossian – 15-20 hands – and how many of James MacPherson – perhaps 10 hands.
Having broken the theatre’s fourth wall, Brecht-like, Martin keeps talking to us and asking questions he mostly answers himself onstage without a break for the next 90 minutes, laced with personal reflections about his distant relationship with his Gaelic-speaking grandfather in a West of Scotland working class voice, sometimes repeating the end of phrases, as such voices sometimes do.
More from this author
ALISTAIR FINDLAY welcomes a collection of essays from one of the cultural left’s most respected speakers and activists
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ALISTAIR FINDLAY recommends the first representative selection in English of the poetry of the Soviet war correspondent Ilya Ehrenburg
ALISTAIR FINDLAY recommends a brilliant collection of poems written to accompany stunning images of the Miners’ strike
