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Pitlochry Festival Theatre Four stars What to do when the war is over and Johnny, or Bill in the case of W Somerset Maugham's quietly subversive comedy, doesn't come marching home? With Bill missing presumed dead for three years and World War One's hostilities long since done and dusted, frippish coquette Victoria does what any nice gel would, and gets hitched to Bill's best friend Fred. The allure of one man in uniform is one thing, but when Bill turns up on her doorstep, Victoria's accidental polyandry becomes an awfully big adventure for all, even as Fred has his sights set on a blonde stenographer while Alan J Mirren's silver-tongued charmer Leicester Paton is currently finding more favour with Victoria than either spouse. Written in 1915 and first seen onstage four years later, Maugham's deceptively frothy affair keeps its own amused council regarding its greater intent, even as it winks at those in the know. There are hints of this in Richard Ba

Test Dept – Still Raging Against the Machine

When iconoclastic 'metal-bashing' auteurs Test Dept reconvened in 2014 to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the UK-wide Miners Strike as part of the Newcastle upon Tyne based AV Festival of art, film and experimental sound and music, it was an emotional experience. Rather than play live to reclaim the band's provocative fusion of martial percussion and constructivist inspired stage shows that recycled the scrap metal ruins of industrial Britain into an impassioned and visceral form of oppositional spectacle throughout the Thatcher years, Test Dept chose to take audiences on a boat trip and give them a film show. DS30 was a thirty-minute collage of archive footage pulled together by Test Dept's Brett Turnbull that charts the history of the mining industry and the communities that worked in it, through to the bitter unrest during the strike and Test Dept's own presence throughout it on their 1984 Fuel To Fight tour. With the sturm und drang of Test Dept'

Big Gold Dream: Scottish Post Punk and Infiltrating the Mainstream 1977-82

Imagine a record label that turned down Joy Division. Imagine if that record label had already turned down The Cramps. Now imagine a feature-length documentary charting the wayward history of Scottish indie music that doesn't mention Glasgow until some thirty-eight minutes in. Such expectation-confounding contradictions are the driving forces behind Big Gold Dream: Scottish Post Punk and Infiltrating the Mainstream 1977-82, Grant McPhee's new meticulously sourced filmic dissection of Edinburgh's world-changing post-punk scenes which has its world première this weekend at Edinburgh International Film Festival. Ten years in the making, Big Gold Dream charts the legacy of Bob Last and Hilary Morrison's short-lived Fast Product label, which put out the first records by The Mekons, Gang of Four, The Human League and Dead Kennedys, as well as Edinburgh's original post-punks, Scars. With only occasional diversions to Glasgow, where Alan Horne founded Postcard Records

The Driver's Seat

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Four stars When a young woman about to go on holiday finally reaches the end of her tether, her largely male colleagues indulge her, only laughing at her seemingly highly-strung antics once she's out of sight. So it goes for Lise, the enigmatic heroine of Muriel Spark's 1970 novella, a chronicle of a death foretold brought to life here in Laurie Sansom's adaptation for his own National Theatre of Scotland production. Clad in vividly clashing candy-stripes as she takes a plane to an un-named European city, Morven Christie's Lise is forever in transit and in search of her own soul more than the potentially dangerous liaisons she never quite embarks on. As her movements are forensically mapped out and dissected by those left in her wake, an elusive, barely there portrait emerges, not just of Lise, but of a psychologically and sexually repressed society barely coping with its apparent new liberties. All this is is played out by San

The Siege

Tron Theatre, Glasgow Three stars Bethlehem is a holy place. This is something the Church of the Nativity's tour guide makes clear when he steps from the audience in the Palestine refugee camp based Freedom Theatre's production of Nabil Al-Raee's new play, created and directed with Zoe Lafferty, which closes its UK tour at the Tron this week. But it can be other things too. It is in the church's confines, after all, where a group of machine-gun wielding young men seek sanctuary from a hostile Israeli army intent on desecration of a different kind. Inside, amidst sporadic bursts of gunfire, the men noisily hold their own alongside a smattering of priests, nuns and others caught in the cross-fire of a very unholy war. As the men settle in for the long haul, tensions rise and fall, with a sense of solidarity coming from gallows humour as much as the soul-sapping fatalities and concerns beyond themselves that eventually sees them acquiesce to their captors and the e

F.F.S

Glasgow School of Art Five stars As concept-driven theatrical art-pop collaborations go, there are few more perfect than this year's hook-up between rejuvenated glam/disco/electro oddballs Sparks and Glasgow-sired quartet Franz Ferdinand, whose own fusion of dancefloor-driven jauntiness and lyrical archness has never shied away from its debt to the Mael brothers fabulist canon. With a tour pending that includes a sold out date at this year's Edinburgh International Festival, it was only fitting that such a super-group made its full live début at FF's spiritual alma mater. Fanfared on by the plastic triumphalism of the theme from Blake's 7, this unholy black-and-white clad alliance gallop into a salvo of songs from this year's eponymous album, with Franz's Alex Kapranos and Sparks' Russell Mael trading vocals and hamming it up on frantic and frenetic future gay club classics like Johnny Delusional as if their lives depended on it. At moments they

Dominic Hill - The Citizens Theatre's Autumn 2015 Season

The announcement of the Citizens Theatre's forthcoming autumn season has been something of a gradual affair this year. While the shows scheduled by Citz artistic director Dominic Hill have been regularly revealed on the pages of the Herald, this year much of the season is already out there. Both David Greig's new version of Alasdair Gray's epic novel Lanark and Vox Motus' revival of their show for young people, Dragon, will be seen at this year's Edinburgh International Festival prior to their Glasgow dates, while this year's Christmas show, Rapunzel, is also in the public domain. Three very special parts of the Citz' autumn programme, however, are revealed here for the first time. First of all, the Glasgow-based Solar Bear company will present Progression, an International Celebration of Deaf Arts, set to run over two days in September. Secondly, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of The Close, the Citizens Theatre's ill-fated