Slab Boys
First produced at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre in 1977, Slab Boys has become one of Scotland's most performed plays. John Byrne’s nostalgic black comedy is set in the pigment-mixing room of a carpet factory in mid-SOs Paisley. A long-awaited film version, directed by Byrne himself, will be premiered in Glasgow as part of the Edinburgh Film Festival this week. The cast includes Tom Watson, as the fascistic foreman Willie Curry, Robin Laing as rebellious teddy boy Phil, Russell Barr as his china Spanky, Moray Hunter (of Hunter And Docherty fame) as Plooky Jack H099 and Louise Berry (left) as Lucille, hot love-interest for the sexually frustrated slab-room. Reviews have been disappointing, but the play's popularity will ensure a run on tickets.
Slab Boys (Film Festival) Glasgow Film Theatre, 0747 332 8128, Mon 1 7 Aug, 7.30pm; Cameo, 2284741, Mon 78 Aug, 70.30pm, £6 (£4).
CHRIS BLOTT
Platée
High art meets high fashion in the Royal Opera House’s staging of Raneau’s Platee. Collaborating for the first time with Mark Morris means they also get his regular costume designer, Isaac Mizrahi (left), lauded as ’7th Avenue’s Darling’ back home in NYC, and subject of the 1995 documentary Unzipped. True to the comic nature of the opera — which features a tenor in drag in the title role — Mizrahi has drawn on Margaret Dumont’s character in the Marx Brothers’ movies for his inspiration. 'She is always lovelorn over Groucho,’ explains Mizrahi. ’In the end it is like this big joke, like he is never meant to marry her, like he was using her all along. That is the thing I kept thinking about Platee — she is this earnest woman who thinks she is beatufiul but she is way too old, way too fat and way too frog-like to be beautiful ’ (Thom Dibdin)
Plate'e (International Festival,l Edinburgh Festival Theatre, 529 6000, 7 7, 73 8' .74 Aug, 7. 75pm, £5—f50.
*3 ’1‘
THE LIST Festival party
sponsored by
The List would like to thank all those who appeared at the opening Festival party at The Famous Grouse House:
Mika
Flamboyant, glamorous, gorgeous and glitzy. New Zealand‘s master of cabaret.
Assembly Rooms, 8-30 Aug.
Loyko Astonishing music from the Russian gypsy band. Assembly Rooms, 7 5— 19 Aug; Graffiti, 20 & 26—29 Aug.
The Hoodangas The wildest jazz straight from where it was born — the gutter. The Famous Spiegeltent, 8—9 a 71—14 Aug.
Ruby Fruit Jungle Hip hop, funk, Brazilian rhythms - dance and groove. The Famous Spiege/tent, 3—5 81 22—25 Aug.
East Coast Project Basic Collective Live bands and DJs for an all-nighter. Flux at Jaffa Cake, 27 Aug. Jump! Four women, original music, intimate confessions. The Gilded Balloon, 8—30 Aug (not ll, 78). Juliana Brustik Raqs Sharqui Egyptian dancing. PLUS Club sounds from Joseph Malik and The List's very own Jim Byers and Rory Weller. Thanks boys.
IE How’s
8—14 Aug 1997TIIE um