by Eddie Harrison

They did it at Stravinsky’s ballet Rite of Spring. They did it at the Abbey Theatre for the Dublin premiere of JM Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World. And it must have appeared to disgruntled members of the audience at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith, London that they’re still at it.

Reports have surfaced of youth gone wild at the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of 365 by David Harrower (pictured) on Wednesday night. It seems a stand-off developed between teenage theatre-goers firstly with other members of the audience, then with the venue’s staff until the police had to be called to quell the situation.

Despite the temptation to start manning the ramparts to defend the notion of civilised theatre from uncultured barbarian hoards, the 365 riot probably isn’t quite the attack on culture drama it might appear. Directed by NTS artistic director Vicky Featherstone, 365 is a responsible examination of the difficulties affecting young people emerging from care homes.

As such it forms part of a current trend for plays about disaffected youth that includes Paddy Cunneen’s teen knife drama Fleeto and Haris Pasovic's revival of Nigel Williams’ punk influenced Class Enemy which like 365 was recently staged as part of the Edinburgh International Festival. All three productions have played to mixed audiences of all ages without incident. So what changed at the Lyric, a theatre with a good reputation for attracting young audiences?

Such altercations take place at gigs, at films, and in pubs regularly, so there's no reason why theatre should automatically consider itself immune to disruption. Theatre directors may talk about attracting new audiences and young people to their challenging shows but when they actually do turn up, theatre management have a responsibility to ensure that all ticket holders have the chance to enjoy the play. There is nothing about reports of the disturbance at 365 to suggest it was sparked by artistic considerations. Instead it seems to be the result of a few yobs getting out of hand, symptomatic of a general failure of the arts to engage with young people; a gap ironically that NTS are clearly attempting to address with 365.

TrackBack (0)

Comments (0) | Permalink|

by Alan Chadwick

This Friday the BBC will launch BBC Alba, the corporation's new Gaelic channel. But given that 98% of the country doesn't speak Gaelic (even if it has become trendy among the chattering classes to send their kids to a gaelic speaking school so they too can learn to pepper lyrical if uninteligible conversations with Johnny Foreigner words such as  'nuclear power station', 'McDonalds' and 'credit crunch' ) what exactly is the point?

The new digital service,a vailable on Sky, Freestat and Virgin Media, is aimed at a core audience of between 60,000 and 100,000 Gaelic speaking viewers. Which let's face it makes the channel's annual budget of £14m look generous in the extreme. Casting aside the heritage angle ( you don't see Silvio Berlusconi investing in a Latin channel in Italy) if the aim is to give voice to a neglected minority then what about the Chinese, Italians, Poles and Asians that make up a large part of our Caledonian melting pot. Where's their channel? I would have said the same for Neds but they already have their own broadcasting service; it's called youtube.

Not surprisingly the project has the backing of professional Scot Alex Samond; you know the man who gets ex-pat film star Sean Connery to do his party's political broadcasts and whose idea of promoting 21st century Scotland is having pipers in kilts parade around the streets of New York in Scotland Week. And even the luvvies of the fashion world had a pop at that last week.   

In the end of course the new channel will be judged on its content. BBC Alba promises the usal mix of news, sport, music, drama, entertainment and documentaries. But let's face it the history of Gaelic broadcasting is hardly a glorious one. Anyone remember dire Teuchter soap Machair? Whereas Welsh-speaking TV taps into a thriving living language and a young, hip, patriotic audience in tune with home-grown cutting edge culture such as Super Furry Animals

Friday evening's broadcast features a drama about Elvis arriving on Lewis starring Greg Hemphill (pictured) some deedley -dee folk music and a documentary about serial killer Peter Manuel.  Non-Gaelic converts I suspect will be thin on the ground.    

TrackBack (0)

Comments (0) | Permalink|

by Nadine McBay

11 years since their debut single Queen Of The Troubled Teens, Edinburgh-formed folk-tinged guitar princelings Idlewild are to perform all their back catalogue at Glasgow’s King Tut's in December.

The five-piece will play 1998’s Hope Is Important on Dec 17, 2000’s 100 Broken Windows on Dec 18 and 2002’s The Remote Part on Dec 19. 2005’s distinctly REM-tinged Warnings/Promises will be twinned with an acoustic set on Dec 20, while last year’s Make Another World is paired with their clattering 1998 debut EP Captain on Dec 21. Tickets are £15 per night or there’s an option of buying a five-night pass for £50.

Such a backwards-looking move, coupled with the release of Best Of and Rarities collections last year, may raise speculation about the future of the band, who’ve had to deny rumours of a split before. Then there’s the recently-released Before The Ruin, frontman Roddy Woomble’s latest collaboration with Kris Drever and John McCusker.

But rather than a tidying-up swansong, perhaps the mini-residency is to raise some cash for the recording of their sixth album, which is apparently mostly written.

After all, Idlewild find themselves in a bizarre predicament: they may be indie uncles to a new generation of bands, but after the release of Make Another World, they are currently without a label. Hopefully some talent spotters will pick them up at these gigs.

TrackBack (0)

Comments (0) | Permalink|

by Eddie Harrison

According to recent statements by Glasgow City Council, the latest bridge over the Clyde is on course to be completed by Spring 2009. It’s set to link Tradeston with the International Financial Services district in Broomielaw. The futuristic footbridge, known as the Tradeston bridge, is intended to be part of a general rejuvenation of both areas as part of the Clyde Waterfront Urban Renewal Programme.

Good as this sounds, will the Tradeston bridge prove a bridge too near for the public? It’s not that far from the George V bridge (pictured) while further down the river there’s another two bridges, within a hundred yards of each other, both linking Pacific Quay and the Digital Media Quarter with the SECC. Which means that anyone living east of the BBC headquarters can pretty much forget about crossing the Clyde unless using a car or public transport. The only route for pedestrians or cyclists involves going through the Clyde Tunnel walkway, a genuinely hair-raising experience which causes Vietnam-style flashbacks to those who have traversed its dank, graffiti-covered and urine-soaked underground coils.

There may be good reasons why a series of expensive bridges are built within spitting distance of each other, while long stretches of the Clyde are left vacant. But we can’t think of any. And if the council are genuinely serious about getting Glaswegians to give up their cars, trying to reclaim the Clyde tunnel as a pedestrian and bike route might be just as useful an innovation as cutting the daily trek of Tradeston’s city-centre dwellers by a few minutes.

TrackBack (0)

Comments (0) | Permalink|

by Eddie Harrison

Hold the phone! O2 have just announced that Glasgow will be the first UK city offering mobile phone reception while riding the mobile cavalcade of human flotsam and jetsam that is our underground system,

By the end of 2008, passengers at Buchanan Street, St Enoch, Kelvinbridge, Hillhead and Partick stations will be able to use a "multi-user distributed antenna system" to send and receive information on the move. This means that for once Glaswegians will be able to waggle their retractable dongles with pride at those down south, with London apparently still some way from developing this kind of technological frippery.

It could be argued, of course, that London has a proper underground and not a circular kiddie-ride, and that given the short length of most underground journeys north of the border, customers rarely face disconnection from the outside world for more than 20 minutes. Aware that large parts of Glasgow still seem to be black-spots for mobile-phone connection (including the Metro office, a stone’s throw away from Central Station), we’re certainly all in favour of having at least one place in the city centre where you can be sure of getting a decent signal.

And yet, we can’t help noticing that the phone-free areas of life are becoming fewer and fewer. Welding telecommunications devices to our ears, or even implanting them inside our heads seems like the natural next step. Being continually connected to mobile networks may well be the thing of the future, but we’d hate to lose the simple joys of being ‘off message’ for a few minutes each and every day.

TrackBack (0)

Comments (0) | Permalink|

by Nadine McBay

Five months after it’s launch at Glasgow’s CCA, tickets go on sale Friday Sep 12 at 3pm for Season One of The Tennent’s Mutual, a pan-Scottish programme of gigs shaped by the 3700-odd music fans who signed up to vote on how to spend a fund of £150, 000 from the lager company.

With dates from the likes of Teenage Fanclub (Dundee Fat Sams 27/10 and Inverness Ironworks 2/11), Glasvegas (pictured, Dumfries Venue 30/10 and Ayr Town Hall 31/10), Sons And Daughters (Paisley Town Hall 12/11) and King Creosote (Inverness Iron works 2/11 and Fort William BA Club 8/11), this first slew of gigs sees the Mutual keeping things closer to home than Triptych, Tennent’s previous itinerant festival, which wound up in April after eight years of allying international icons such as Grace Jones with lesser-known, leftfield acts.

With the bills shaped by the headlining act, The Tennent’s Mutual offers some unexpected line-ups however with Season One’s warm-up shows featuring LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy performing after bleep-popsters Findo Gask and Fence’s Kid Canaveral in Glasgow (CCA 20/9) and after the stark folk racket of Frightened Rabbit and rising weegies Isosceles in Edinburgh (The Caves 21/9).

Tickets are available from www.tennentsmutual.com for all the shows apart from Glasvegas’s gigs, which go on sale from Monday at 9am. If you’re hurting because you voted for Arcade Fire or Radiohead, hold out for Season Two, when revenue from Season One will be reinvested and topped-up by a donation from Tennent’s.

TrackBack (0)

Comments (0) | Permalink|

by Alan Chadwick

Best of the Fest

The second annual Scottish Mental Health Arts And Film Festival has just launched. Pretty impressive it looks too. The multi-strand festival runs from Oct 1 to 19 across Scotland including Perth, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow. It aims to tackle the stigma associated with mental health as well as provide a platform for those connected with the issue to engage in a dialogue with the public. But just because the festival's worthy don't think that makes it dull.

Events that took our eye include 'supergroup' happening Vitamin A at Glasgow's ABC on Oct 9 which features Idlewild's Rod Jones, Teenage Fanclub's Norman Blake, Sons And Daughters and The Twilight Sad performing individually as well in collaboration. Vitamin B the following night isn't too shoddy neither and features The Fence Collective, Delgados founder Emma Pollock and the intriguing Future Pilot AKA v Concerto Caledonia.

On the theatre front Ed Fringe favourite David Benson will be delving into the psyche of Kenneth Williams in one-man show Think No Evil Of Us: My Life With Kenneth Williams at Gilmorehill G12, while Edinburgh's St Bride's Centre and East Kilbride Arts Centre plays host to Paddy Cunneens' current touring knife crime drama Fleeto followed by a post-show discussion with the writer/director.

Movies to watch out for include Ken Loach's ground breaking darma documnetary Cathy Come Home at Glasgow's Grosvenor and Luna's 3 Film Chronicle at Dundee's The Steps Theatre, Wellgate Centre which examines changes in mental health against the background of three 19th century Tayside asylums.

TrackBack (0)

Comments (0) | Permalink|

by Alan Chadwick

As news breaks of proposals for a new dedicated Scottish digital channel we'll leave it to others to crunch the numbers (between £50 to £75m) and debate the political fallout. Rather as regular telly addicts we'd much prefer to concentrate on what direction the new public service broadcast station should take.

As our previous posting on Scottish film archive shows there's no denying there's an appetite for nostalgia. But let's not be blinkered. If the new Scottish Network does get up and running surely HBO not the heritage trail is the road to go down. The Wire not Monarch Of The Glen. Scottish broadcasting has been in a slump of late unable to place Scottish shows on the network. What's needed now is radical thinking.

That doesn't mean targeting ex-pat channel hoppers with an outmoded sense of the country but rather serving up home-grown quality programmes Scottish viewers deserve. For instance the new station could do much worse than headhunt Black Watch writer Gregory Burke (pictured) and give him a golden handcuffs deal to show he's more than a match for Shameless writer Paul Abbot or Jimmy McGovern (Cracker) before Channel 4 or the BBC do.

While we're at it why not look into possibilities of bringing telecasts of Scottish Opera, Scottish Ballet and the National Theatre of Scotland to the table as happens with the Met in New York.

Documentary, history and sport will no doubt play their part too. But let's try and ensure they say something relevant about the multicultural society we live in now as much as they do our past. And I don't mean Old Firm SWAG makeover shows Big-budget, high-end fare Scottish dramas with real stars such as James McAvoy wouldn't go amiss either.

As for the comedy end of things we're sure that'll take care of itself. And that's just the jockeying for position various Government and media nabobs are sure to be partaking in over the years to come as the nation's digital TV future comes under closer scrutiny.

TrackBack (0)

Comments (0) | Permalink|

by Eddie Harrison

Over the last few years, we’ve been invited to view a number of showcases of short films which represent Scottish heritage. We’ve seen them shown in cinemas, we’ve seen them playing on several televisions at once at the Lighthouse, we’ve even seen them mashed up to crazy hip-hop beats, projected on walls and shown in nightclubs.

None of these arrangements have proved satisfactory in terms of displaying these priceless bits of film, given that it’s fairly obvious they’re best appreciated and enjoyed in the comfort of your own homes rather than standing in a public place.  So hats off to the BFI, whose new You Tube channel offers 186 films, including 23 with Scottish content, and has been rewarded with a quarter of a million viewings already.

Scotland has already made a huge and worthwhile effort to preserve its film-making heritage through the Scottish Film Archive, but it’s about time we Scots took a leaf out of the BFI’s book and set up our own method of displaying films in the same way as the BFI’s You Tube channel.

This clip from Claude Friese-Greene’s The Open Road display a vision of Scotland in the 1920’s which is both surprising in its quaintness, yet familiar in that some elements of our country don’t seem to have changed that much in 80 years. Having spent a large amount of public money preserving several generations of Scottish films, surely the next step  should be making sure the public can see exactly what has been preserved?

TrackBack (0)

Comments (0) | Permalink|

by Alan Chadwick

While all the talk surrounding BBC Scotland's seasonal launch last week was about the absence of Chewin' The Fat and Still Game comedy twosome Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill's new sitcom Two Bob Rocket from the line- up, we at Metro were more than delighted to see Glasgow internet comedy phenomenon Limmy finally get his just rewards with his own half hour show. Even if it comes gift wrapped with the underwhelming title Limmy's Show. (Do folk actually get paid to come up with these titles we ask ourselves. And if so where can we sign up?!)

As it for those not familiar with Limmy aka Brian Limond (and if not why not?) the writer, web designer and performer has built up a huge following for his character based World of Glasgow podcasts. The past two years have seen him take his talents out on the road live which never really worked quite as well. His style of catchphrase comedy was always going to be better suited to the small screen. In fact we said as much when reviewing his stand up.

Now that that moment has duly arrived we can't wait to see characters such as hard as nails ex-junkie Jacqueline McCafferty, dole-bound Dee and psycho ned John Paul become the toast of the playground and water cooler quicker than you can say : 'Gie's yer jaicket.'

http://www.limmy.com/videos/bbaudition/

TrackBack (0)

Comments (0) | Permalink|