Borrowed Time: Lennon’s Last Decade, Parthenope, Where Dragons Live and Thunderbolts* reviewed by MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE
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History from below
ALISTAR FINDLAY is mesmerised by this multiple ‘Visions of Scotland’ assault on the audience’s eyes and senses
Martin O’Connor and chorus
CHRIS SEARLE wallows in an evening of high class improvised jazz, and recommends upcoming highlights in May
MARY CONWAY applauds the revival of a tense, and extremely funny, study of men, money and playing cards
MEHDI ACHOUCHE explores the constant fascination of cinema with Marxist alienation from Fritz Lang and Chaplin to Bong Joon Ho
FIONA O’CONNOR steps warily through a novel that skewers many of the exposed flanks of the over-privileged
MARY CONWAY applauds the study of a dysfunctional family set in an Ireland that could be anywhere
MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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.
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