KEN COCKBURN assesses the art of Ian Hamilton Finlay for the experience of warfare it incited and represents
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ALISTAR FINDLAY is mesmerised by this multiple ‘Visions of Scotland’ assault on the audience’s eyes and senses
Martin O’Connor and chorus
The bard gives us advance notice of his upcoming medieval K-pop releases
GORDON PARSONS steps warily through the pessimistic world view of an influential US conservative
HENRY BELL takes issue with the assertion that basic income is a remedy for poverty when it doesn’t address the inbuilt inequality of capitalism
RON JACOBS welcomes an investigation of the murders of US leftist activists that tells the story of a solidarity movement in Chile
RITA DI SANTO surveys the smorgasbord of films on offer at this year’s festival
Reviews of A New Kind Of Wilderness, The Marching Band, Good One and Magic Farm by MARIA DUARTE, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA
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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