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BOOKS Literary lovers take note – the shortlist has been announced for this year’s Scottish Book of the Year Award. The list includes: Leila Aboulela’s fiction novel Lyrics Alley, Jackie Kay’s non-fiction Red Dust Road, Stewart Conn’s poetry tome The Breakfast Room and Sue Peebles’ The Death of Lomond Friel, which was put forward in the Best First Book category.
FESTIVAL The festival season is officially upon us (see our Summer Festivals feature from page 15) with new names and line-ups being revealed daily. We’re especially excited about the news that the mighty Beyoncé and indie favs Metronomy have both been added to this year’s T in the Park line-up. See tinthepark.com. Further north, RockNess have revealed that Bombay Bicycle Club and Sparrow and the Workshop will join their line-up. Pleasing. See rockness. co.uk for more.
for FILM It’s not been entirely smooth sailing the Edinburgh International Film Festival in recent months, but full programme details have finally been revealed for a bold new type of Festival. See our feature coverage, from page 42, and edfilmfest.org.uk for more.
jam-packed with possibility, MUSIC Scottish Opera continue to add some sizeable strings to their bow with a new season, just announced. Eight new shows, two revivals, six collaborations and 105 performances should ensure that you have no excuses for not enjoying a slice of the action, spread as it is across 43 venues over the
Bombay Bicycle Club head to RockNess
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next 12 months. Highlights include a new translation of Offenbach’s irreverent tale Orpheus in the Underworld by political satirist Rory Bremner and Sir Thomas Allen’s revival of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville; elsewhere, David McVicar will direct Stravinsky’s wonderful The Rake’s Progress.
THEATRE Those busy bees at The National Theatre of Scotland have been recruiting left, right and centre: Catriona Lexy Campbell has been appointed the company’s first Gaelic Associate Artist having been brought in to help support their Gaelic Strategy; elsewhere NToS have announced, in partnership with Solar Bear and The Arches, a year-long residency for deaf performance artist Ramesh Meyyappan. The company have also revealed plans to launch a new directors’ programme, a project which will offer three Scottish or Scotland-based theatre directors the opportunity to work with Vicky Featherstone and John Tiffany as an assistant director on one of the National new productions. In other theatre news, across the pond, Scottish talent is making a splash, with news that Joanna Tope – who appeared in The List’s hotly tipped The Promise by Random Accomplice – has been nominated for a Drama Desk Award in the Outstanding Solo Performance category. Congrats to her. Theatre’s
VISUAL ART And finally, fans of Glasgow gallery Sorcha Dallas should check out their rather lovely new website at sorchadallas.com.
Channel Hopper
Dispatches from the sofa, with Brian Donaldson
■ While the men of the Shankill Road blast away on their flutes and bang against their bass drums, it acts as a stark contrast with the inner turmoil that results in many of them living in silence, the worst stirrings of their memories leaving them mute against the prevailing winds of change. In Wonderland: The Men Who Won’t Stop Marching (BBC2, Wed 1 Jun, 9pm), documentary-maker Alison Millar keeps hammering away at these stoical Ulstermen who have bolted away the horrors they have witnessed or perhaps even been party to.
Somehow learning from Belfast’s bloody past is the only way to save the children, such as Jordan, a lad with a cheeky grin and a love of percussion, whose innocence has already been tainted by seeing the aftermath of a suicide. One current drummer admits to acting like a kid on the march as his childhood was spent worrying that he might die at the end of a sniper’s rifle at any moment.
But are these people
unreconstructed bigots? Millar doesn’t really tackle this head-on, apart from asking one band leader whether he would allow a Catholic in: he would, but only if they renounced their faith and became a Protestant. The young lads of the area are joining a band as there is little else to do, but once there, the entrenched prejudices and siege mentality can only breed bitterness in further generations. Is that really a choice?
Still drumming up a storm 26 May–23 June 2011 THE LIST 11