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AROUND TOWN Here at List HQ we intend to do our bit and check out Voluntary Arts Week Action (Fri 6–Sat 14 May), which offers arts and crafts groups across Scotland the chance to come together and celebrate what they do and learn from each other in the process. Check out their flagship event at Festival Square, Edinburgh on Sat 7 May from 11am–4pm, with craft demonstrations and more. See voluntaryartsweek.org for more. Elsewhere, in the capital, speed dating takes on a whole new meaning, with Jean Smith’s Flirting Tour of Edinburgh – a 90-minute interactive walking for singletons. Check it out on 12 May before it returns over the Festival in August. Tickets cost £25, see flirtology.co.uk CLUBS Congratulations all round to Club Noir which has been rated as one of the top 10 cabaret shows worldwide by American TV station the Travel Channel. The channel described Club Noir as ‘a sexy combination of burlesque, dancing, tour
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circus and vaudeville’. We like it. MUSIC Look out for our top notch music festivals coverage in the next issue of The List; in the meantime let us whet your appetite with news that RockNess have added a brand new Rock’n’Roll Circus strand, as well as a 20 Years of Soma celebration. Excited much? Oh yes we are. Fans of classical musical, science, or both, should take note of a last minute addition to the listings. Professor Brian Foster, Head of Particle Physics at Oxford University, and Jack Liebeck, one of Europe’s most exciting young violinists (pictured), present a double header of science and music at Glasgow City Hall, Einstein’s Universe on Wed 25 May. See einsteinsuniverse.com : T M M E A R A
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THEATRE And finally, happy theatre news as the Traverse are welcoming playwright Peter Arnott to the fold as part of a joint artistic venture. More as we have it. Also on the horizon, Musselburgh’s Brunton Theatre prepares for a facelift. Club Noir has been rated as one of the top 10 cabaret shows worldwide
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Channel Hopper
Dispatches from the sofa, with Brian Donaldson
■ Of course, it’s a huge cliché, but those Americans really know how to do TV drama, with those down HBO way more adept than most at cranking up the quality. The first series of In Treatment (Sky Atlantic, Fri 29 Apr, 10pm) came and went with little fuss, but this new second batch deserves much wider acclaim. In season one, the rugged yet sensitive psychotherapist Dr Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne) had patients who attempted suicide in his bathroom, miscarried on his couch and goaded him to the point where he threw scalding coffee in their face. Meanwhile, his own marital problems came to the fore while he laid bare his true feelings for his patients in his own sessions with Gina (Dianne Wiest). To your average shrink, this might all sound a little too action-packed, but In Treatment is small-screen armchair theatre at its best.
In this second season, Weston has split from his wife and moved from Baltimore to New York, where he is handed a lawsuit for malpractice after the death at the cockpit of fighter pilot patient Alex. Among this season’s patients are an art student in denial about her serious illness, a young boy with warring parents and an ageing CEO (John Mahoney) who stubbornly refuses to slow down. Intense, intelligent and moving, In Treatment is innovative and complex fare with a deep, bold heart.
It’s good to talk 28 Apr–26 May 2011 THE LIST 9
ReviewofReviews
THE HARD MAN NOW TOURING
WHAT WE SAID: ‘Tom McGrath’s deeply felt portrayal of a brutalised man in a brutal system has lost none of its resonance, and Alex Ferns takes on the leading role with relish.’ THE LIST WHAT THEY SAID: ‘It is eccentric and a little unwieldy, but also a period piece that makes the period seem a more interesting place to be.’ THE GUARDIAN
SEE THEHARDMAN.CO.UK ‘Alex Ferns, as Byrne, gives
the performance of a lifetime, as a man struggling from an instinctive drive towards survival and dominance in a rough environment, towards a life . . . of new possibilities.’ THE SCOTSMAN ‘This is less a condemnation of the extreme brutality of the prison regime of the early seventies, more a warning that we replicate at our peril, the brutalising social environment that created Boyle in the first place.’ THE STAGE