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BAFTA-winning actress Kate Dickie is set to appear in What We Know at the Traverse
AROUND TOWN Glasgow’s Southside festival will return to the city on Sat 22 May complete with classical concerts, activities, art exhibitions and more. See southsidefestival.co.uk. science for his third major work for the company. Created to commemorate Charles Darwin Year in 2009, Baldwin’s The Comedy of Change will play at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow this month.
BOOKS A letter written by Robert Burns’ widow is to be given to the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh, following its discovery last year in a New York junk shop. In Glasgow, Germaine Greer, Sandy Toksvig and a collection of the Aardman Wallace and Gromit crew have been added to the Aye Write! line- up in March, following news that John Simpson has had to cancel his appearance.
CLUBS The organisers of Croation dance music festival, Garden, have announced inclusion of Scotland’s own Harri and Dominic from Subclub, as part of their ever- growing programme of acts. the
COMEDY Additional dates for Frankie Boyle, Jimmy Carr and Lee Mack have been added to the Glasgow International Comedy Festival, following high demand for tickets. See glasgowcomedy festival.com.
D A N C E Scottish Ballet dancer Paul Liburd has been awarded the Dancing Times Best Male Dancer Award at the Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards. The award comes as Liburd prepares to retire from the company, following his final performance in SB’s upcoming Romeo and Juliet. Elsewhere, following his Olivier Award nomination for Constant Speed in 2005, Mark Baldwin, Rambert Dance Company’s Artistic Director, is returning to the world of 8 THE LIST 4–18 Feb 2010
FILM The White Stripes documentary film Under Great White Northern Lights, which chronicles their 2007 Canadian tour, has been confirmed for a run in UK cinemas to coincide with its upcoming release on DVD and CD. Closer to home, Richard Jobson has revealed that the follow up to his Edinburgh-based New Town Killers will be based around his Skids band song ‘Into the Valley’, which was originally written about soldiers in Ulster at the height of ‘the troubles’. Dougray Scott is expected to star, as the action is moved to 21st century Afghanistan.
MUSIC The Wickerman Festival is asking artists and bands to send in tracks, the best of which will be used to promote the festival in an advert. Winners will also get to play on this year’s main stage. See thewickerman.co.uk for more. Celebrating 20 years of one of Glasgow’s best-loved music institutions, Manic Street Preachers will play King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut on Thu 18 Feb. Meanwhile, over in festival line-up news, Leftfield have been announced for RockNess. THEATRE And finally, the Traverse Theatre have announced a special commission with Pamela Carter and BAFTA-winning Red Road actress Kate Dickie. What We Know will run at the Traverse as part of their experimental Traverse Too strand of work.
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Channel Hopper
Dispatches from the sofa, with Brian Donaldson
■ Are we actually in the midst of a halcyon period for Scottish telly comedy? Or is it easy to get carried away when, to use the vernacular of their main figureheads, two current shows aren’t actually pish? Ringing in the new is Limmy’s Show (BBC2, Mon, 10pm) while chiming out ancient profanities of yore is Rab C Nesbitt (BBC2, Thu, 9.30pm), now stoatin’ about in his ninth series. Limmy is best viewed as poking around the margins of the Jam-period Chris Morris, as many of the sketches have a trippy, confrontational quality which separates this show from the bulk of the Beeb’s comedy output: though who hasn’t considered dabbling in Class A substances when faced with a brand new episode of Coming of Age?
‘Let me tell you this boy . . .’ Rab C returns for a ninth series
While Limmy’s recurring
characters are perfectly serviceable (the ex-junkie, the Raven-like phone-in host, the reprobate businessman), it’s the one-off sketches which have truly delivered the goods: the metal fans discovering an appreciation of a-ha; the door-holding ‘right, ta’ sequence; and the first Scotsman to encounter a Roman. If people are still insisting that Limmy is an ‘internet sensation’, Rab C Nesbitt should probably just be labelled a ‘Govan headbanger’. Being clean(ish) and sober hasn’t blunted Rab’s spirit and Ian Pattison is continuing to pen his iconic loser with the same sharp wit and skewed wisdom which first brought his string-vested ways into our unwelcoming homes in the early 90s.