If you’re one of those people who never escapes beyond the cosy west end bubble, this weekend is the time to venture to the far and distant land of East Lothian.

I’m talking specifically about the three harbour towns of Prestonpans, Cockenzie and Port Seton. If you know the area you’ll be aware that these towns have struggled hard against the tide of de-industrialisation and are gradually beginning to regenerate through community initiatives such at the Three Harbours Seafood Festival.

Organised by people of East Lothian, the festival is a great example of a community getting together to show the rest of us what they’ve got going. It’s been going for five years now and is perfect for foodies and art buffs.

The festival kicks off on Friday 28 May with an outdoor Ceilidh and birthday party led by the Islander Ceilidh Band. If you’re more interested in the food, why not visit the festival during the day on Saturday or Sunday. Entry to the festival is only £2 and the organisers promise cooking demonstrations, a great real ale tent and lots of fresh produce to buy. There’s free refrigeration all day so you don’t have to worry about your purchases getting ruined while you laze about in the sun by the sea.

Three Harbours Seafood Festival runs from Friday 28-Sunday 30 May at The Greenbelt, Edinburgh Road, Prestonpans. More information can be found at http://www.3harbours.co.uk.

Not so much a side-project as an attached-at-the-side-project, Evelyn Evelyn is not only one of the must thinly veiled musical hoaxes in history, but also one of the most interesting and affecting (barring of course Joaquin Phoenix’s foray into hip-hop– that was a hoax, right?). Dresden Dolls’ Amanda Palmer and long-time friend/collaborator Jason Webley bring out the best in each other as siamese-twin sisters Eva and Lynn Neville on this album, finding the perfect outlet to capitalise on the former’s taste for the intelligently macabre and the latter’s hand at carnivalesque folk.

The tone of this album is has two-headed as its stars, exploring both the interior thoughts of the twins as well as the exterior view of them, and this binary is set up immediately. Beginning with Evelyn Evelyn, the day to day concerns of the the sisters are reeled off as they navigate their path along the periphery of a society who see one oddity rather than of two people, ‘Should we be movie stars, can we be millionaires?/ I want to be famous, they’re watching us anyway’. Conversely, second track A Campaign of Shock and Awe is principally narrated by this external gaze. A seasick waltz carries the step-right-up sales pitch of Palmer and Webley, a dizzying call and response which encircles the girls, and the listener, like a drunken vulture as it presents a catalogue of exploitation.

The dress-up opportunity is taken to float, as they sing themselves, “between eras and genres”, from the Vaudevillian shuffle Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn? to the country twang of You Only Want Me ‘Cause You Want My Sister, in both cases masterfully pairing the appropriate subject matter with their chosen mode. This playful spirit is also seen in the gypsy-classical lunacy of Chicken Man and in naive ode to animal husbandry Elephant Elephant, but care is taken to balance whimsy against woe– and whoa is there woe. The inventory of misfortune and abuse extolled by the twins against a haunting score in the three Tragic Events narratives gives J.T Leroy a run for his/her money, and is made all the more disturbing by the disembodied monotone through which its narrators speak.

Palmer and Webley don a number of masks on this record and it works almost perfectly, the only misstep perhaps being My Space, which lovingly lampoons the New Wave Power Ballad; While succeeding comedically, it makes for relatively turgid listening after a record of such energy and accomplished musicianship. The duo find their footing for a redeeming finale of Love Will Tear Us Apart on the ukulele, thankfully, bookending an absorbing tale of oddity and audience with tongue fitfully and firmly in cheek.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we had a theory of everything?” This sentiment is likely to be expressed by a theoretical physicist, whose area of science has been searching for some sort of ‘Unified Field Theory’ since Albert Einstein coined the term.

The idea is to find some way of joining all the fundamental forces together with the fundamental particles to make a neat and simple formula that somehow explains the universe. ‘Superstring Theory’ has, for many years, been the best candidate for the task, despite its far-flung predictions and apparent un-testability.

This was the subject of the engaging lecture given by Professor Brian Foster and violinist Jack Liebeck as a prelude to Liebeck and pianist Katya Apekisheva’s recital.

Both the lecture and recital were based on Einstein and his connections with music. The link was somewhat tenuous — not much of ‘Superstring Theory’ has anything to do with music, and not much of the recital’s programme had much to do with Einstein — but it was inspiring to hear science joined with music. Einstein was, after all, a great aficionado of classical music and amateur musician himself. He recognised the subtle nature of understanding and the need for approaches other than that of science.

Despite its undeniable success and contribution to the world’s prosperity, most modern science has been based on a strong general principle: to reduce in order to unify. In other words, if we look closely enough at the world around us, then we will see underlying similarities. The discovery that the universe is largely composed of a hundred or so chemical elements is a good example of this. Yet reductionism has its dangers: look at Freud’s destructive attempts to explain human behaviour by means of a few subconscious urges. If we zoom in too closely, we miss the big picture.

Unfortunately, Liebeck and Apekisheva’s playing was infected with some of this harmful reductionism.

Rarely have I heard two such excellent musicians play so well together at the level of single notes, yet so far apart in terms of larger shapes. The shorter phrases were integrated, but in terms of sound, colour and narrative structure, the players were in different worlds.

Equally, when it came to the massively varied styles of the composers programmed — J. S. Bach, Brahms, Mozart, Dvorak and Bloch — it seemed that the performers were trying to play them all in a similar way.

Heterogeneity is to be celebrated; in music this means different techniques and different sound worlds for different composers, especially if the programme stretches across three centuries.

Both performers favoured a somewhat direct approach, avoiding the mystique that makes for the most engaging playing.

This gave the Mozart a certain brutality, but it worked excellently for the Bloch. A composer of Jewish origin, Ernest Bloch often used Jewish motifs in his work, including the three-movement Baal Shem, which Liebeck and Apekisheva played with great energy and conviction.

It was illuminating to hear in Brian Foster’s lecture that the elusive ‘Superstring Theory’ posits explanatory vibrating strings that are actually larger than the current fundamental particles (quarks and the like). In order to understand better, we often need to take a step back.

Jo Shaw

My Name Is Rachel Corrie is one of the  last decade’s most critically acclaimed pieces of political theatre for good reason.

Every sentence, joke and entreaty for the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is taken directly from the journals, blogs and answer machine messages left behind by Rachel Corrie; an American political activist who was killed in March 2003 by an Israeli tank, aged just 23.

Ros Philips’ production at the Citizens Theatre uses these insightful sources verbatim and the result is both inspiring and affecting. Philips’ production is an honest and faithful portrayal of Rachel’s great ability to convey her deepest feelings and hopes through writing, with touching and self-deprecating wit. Above all, it communicates Rachel’s idealism without ever seeming like a political diatribe or a personal tirade.

Herein lies the momentous appeal and the heartbreaking reality of My Name is Rachel Corrie; it is both a political and a personal tragedy. Rachel’s writing portrays all the horror of violence in a conflict which seems no closer to resolution now than in 2003.

Her detailed account of the suffering of the Palestinian people and their dignity in the face of insurmountable military power ensures that any sense of self-importance is tactfully avoided.

The audience is privy to a barrage of facts and figures about water sources and helicopters, which feels as overwhelming as it must have done for Rachel. Her intimate, day-to-day account of life in a war zone, with its insight into Palestinian domestic life as well as the logistics of peaceful protest, ensures that the audience feels a sense of identification and involvement with Rachel and her cause.

The reality of ongoing conflict becomes inescapable in the tiny stalls studio. Mairi Phillips’ commendable performance allows Rachel’s sense of justice and hope to take centre stage in the personal and reflective set. Changing from a dreamily decorated and brightly coloured bedroom to a make-shift tent effectively communicates the self-awareness of Rachel’s journey.

This unassuming lack of self-righteousness is one of the most charming aspects of Phillips’ performance as Rachel, as it acknowledges her past mistakes as we progress from a re-reading of her diary to the documentation of every moment in Gaza. Phillips’ portrayal of Rachel is so easy to identify with that it is almost unsettling.

Music and costume are utilised well, but never allowed to overshadow Rachel’s words. Phillips never relinquishes the audience’s attention or empathy and her magnetism is a perfect match for Rachel’s soaring and lucid writing. The sense of intimacy that the audience is afforded at the beginning of the production makes the final tragedy seem like a personal loss, as well as a political travesty.

The deeply exuberant and humorous beginning to the production makes only for a more tragic end as we see Rachel’s faith in non-violent action begin to waiver. Ros Philips’ production never feels exploitative and the same can be said for its conclusion. The raw normality of her final email is that of a determination to continue to try and help the Palestinian people and retain optimism in the face of so much suffering, which makes this personal and political tragedy even more harrowing. It is often asked whether the world is forgetting about Palestine. My Name is Rachel Corrie is a resonating and moving production, which can only help draw attention to this conflict and to the life of an incredible young woman.

Tom Bonnick

Martin Crimp’s The City — which was first performed in 2008 but feels older; as if perhaps it could have been written at any point in the last thirty years — is a strange, increasingly alarming play: after initially giving the impression of being a (slightly awkwardly staged) kitchen sink drama of sorts, it rapidly evolves in the latter half into a more surreal, often-disturbing dramatic experience that has something of Pinter or Sarah Kane about it.

It is ostensibly the story of a horrifically unhappily-married couple, Clair (Selina Boyack, pictured) and Chris (Ronnie Simon), who both treat their relationship like a game of chess in which one can only have an advantage by seeing several sentences ahead in a conversation — wedlock as psychological warfare.

Crimp is fascinated with language and meaning, components which form the structural basis for the play. Clair and Chris tell each other anecdotes and relay episodes from their days at work and home (Chris has an unspecified office job and Clair, perhaps in a moment of overly heavy-handed symbolism, is a translator) — and then Crimp distorts his vision of the world by following up these anecdotes with a discomfitting existentialist surrealism.

The effect erodes both the distinction between truth and fiction, and the audience’s certainties, until it is not entirely clear what is really happening and what only belongs in the minds and words of his two lead roles.

Periphery characters are introduced and hover on a threshold between reality and fantasy. A neighbour comes to complain about the noise being made by Chris and Clair’s daughter playing in the garden and her grievances transform into a powerful, rather terrifying monologue discussing an unnamed war taking place somewhere abroad, in which her husband is involved in some capacity and which demands of its participants particularly brutal acts of violence — it is one of the play’s most interesting and shocking scenes. Later, in the final moments, the daughter herself emerges and plays a piano piece from behind a screen at the behest of her parents and Jenny, the neighbour – the women all wear the same pink jeans and appear to be morphing into one another; their identities somehow interchangeable.

The Tron’s Changing House theatre is a fantastic space for this production — dark and slightly claustrophobic — and director Andy Arnold, on typically excellent form, maintains tight formal control over his cast. Boyack and Simon enter the play standing unnaturally far apart; both upright and rigid, and Simon does not let go of a tightly-gripped briefcase for some time: between them they create a vaguely unnerving atmosphere from the very beginning, which is only fully articulated with the introduction of the surrounding cast.

This is a uniformly outstanding version of Crimp’s story, made so by Boyack’s icily brilliant performance and Simon’s pitifully spineless one.

Tom Bonnick

Everything that’s wrong with Stewart Laing’s adaptation and direction of Puccini’s immensely popular 1896 opera La Boheme — performed in Glasgow by the usually superb Scottish Opera — seems to be a consequence of the dramatic modernisation to which it has been subjected. That sounds like there’s a lot that’s bad, which isn’t true, really — one aspect in particular doesn’t work, and its general wrongness permeates the rest of an otherwise fine and sometimes excellent production: the result is a slightly confused and occasionally bittersweet pill.

Laing’s fundamental mistake is in believing that the prevailing cultural atmosphere of nineteenth-century bohemian Paris could be satisfactorily evoked by a more contemporary New York hipster scene. What was already a fairly insubstantial story — redeemed by Puccini’s powerful score — has been rendered almost non-existent by the crippling emotional constraints of modernity, and all of the male leads — supposedly a group of writers, philosophers and artists — are unconvincing as anything other than boorish pseudo-intellectuals whose lives we are given no good reason to invest in.

Chief amongst them is Rodolfo (Avi Klemberg), a writer, who by the end of the first act has fallen in love with upstairs neighbour Mimi (Celine Byrne). The dramatic and romantic pinnacle of Act I should, in an ideal world, be O Soave Fanciulla, a heartfelt, rousing duet in which the couple proclaim their mutual adoration. Byrne, who is outstanding throughout, brings real commitment to the scene, but Klemberg delivers his lines without passion or urgency — a situation not helped by uniformly prosaic and unimaginative supertitles and some shaky acoustics for the first half-hour.

Things pick up in Act II, which has been transported to an über-cool art gallery from its original, somewhat less glamorous setting, with dynamic crowd scenes, improved depth of sound and a quicker pace — and we’re also introduced to Musetta (Nadine Livingston), the former beau of Rodolfo’s friend Marcello, who steals the show with diva-esque antics and fantastic stage presence.

When the inevitable final-act tragedy arrives, it feels grating (however expected): the setting and characters simply aren’t imbued with the pathos or richness of feeling required in order for an audience to care, and when Rodolfo declares to Marcello that he’s scared and thinks Mimi is dying, he may as well be offering his buddy another beer, for all the lack of sentiment.

In the hands of conductor Francesco Corti, the Orchestra of Scottish Opera give a terrific rendition of Puccini’s music, which really leads one to the conclusion that this is a production best enjoyed with eyes firmly closed. As well as a disappointing translation of Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa’s original libretto, staging (Act II excepted) is truly dismal — the large space is made to feel bland and empty.

Byrne’s first-rate performance only throws into sharper relief the deficit in Klemberg’s — although in fairness, this is largely because of how little he is given to work with. Mimi makes ornamental fake flowers and Rodolfo is a poet — it should be the other way around.

Maxwell Ward

To say that Jim Carrey’s films are defined by the elasticity of his face is a little much, but it can give a big, gurning clue about what they hope to achieve. That’s why I Love You Phillip Morris is an anomaly in his portfolio, a film which has familiar rubbery expressions, but also moments of pitch-black humour, drama and a heartfelt love story. It is, all in all, surprisingly hard to define.

The story, which we are reminded is true, follows the life of Steven Jay Russell (Jim Carrey), a con artist and serial prison escapee. During one of his first spells in jail he meets fellow inmate Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor), and quickly falls for him. It is the start of a relationship that provides the motor for the film; a love story of exhilarating highs and crushing lows across Russell’s life as a conman, inmate, and fugitive.

The film, which has not been released in the US due to delays finding a distributor, has been re-edited to be less controversial, apparently on the basis of its homosexual content. It is a troubling illustration, if true, of intolerance throughout the US market, and it makes a big statement when films with multiple murders can be seen as mainstream, but those with romantic storylines between two men can’t.

That’s not to say that there are no adult scenes in this film, but the sexual content throughout felt more Carry On than graphic to me. It could be as a consequence of the re-edit of course, but more likely because of the film’s lack of a clear identity, a condition wholly analogous to Russell’s ever-changing persona.

At times the development of Russell and Morris’s relationship, especially in the sex scenes, can feel disturbed by irreverent jokes. It is as if I Love You Phillip Morris cannot decide whether to focus on the drama and character development of the story, or whether to maximise Carrey’s comedy potential, leaving the humour feeling forced and the story interrupted.

That being said, both Carrey and McGregor put in strong performances. Carrey brings his ceaseless energy to a role in which he well cast, an impressionist playing an impressionist, while McGregor is very convincing as the vulnerable Phillip Morris, providing excellent, restrained support that allows a sense of romance and heartbreak to develop subtly. It is his consistency that provides the necessary grounding on which the film succeeds; he invokes compassion, while Russell’s stranger-than-fiction story will keep you entertained throughout.

In recent years, Tim Burton’s output of films has been both offbeat and refreshingly non-conformist. Films such as the supernatural comedy horror of Corpse Bride and his adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory cemented his reputation as a director who wasn’t afraid to go a bit crazy. Anybody would think, therefore, that an adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland would be the perfect vehicle for Burton’s skills.

We start the film with seven-year-old Alice waking from a nightmare in which she has fallen into another world full of talking animals, petulant despotic queens and mad men in crazy top hats. She is comforted by her father, who tells her that “all the best people are mad”, signalling an obsession with psychotherapy which runs throughout the film. We are then introduced to the grown-up Alice (Mia Wasikowska) who falls back down the rabbit hole in an attempt to escape an unwanted engagement. She appears to have forgotten everything about her original journeys in Wonderland, or Underland, as it is now known.

The mania of the original books becomes sidelined in favour of a more serious Wonderland in which the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) has taken control. It is up to Alice, the foretold saviour and destroyer of the Jabberwocky, to save the day and restore the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) to the throne. The inclusion of Carroll’s famous poem The Jabberwocky gives Burton the chance to add a gothic element to this classic children’s tale, giving it a much-needed purpose. The battle between the armies of the Red and White Queens tries but fails to emulate profitable franchises like Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia.

The famous cast reads as a wish-list of British talent, with the voices of the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), Dormouse (Barbara Windsor), Tweedledum/Tweedledee (Matt Lucas) and Absolem the Caterpillar (Alan Rickman) allowing the audience to play a game of guess-the-voice. However, the acting of each character is convincing and engaging. The decision to make the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) simultaneously speak in posh English and gravelly Scots is at times distracting. However Johnny Depp’s performance has the right degree of madness with a touch of wistfulness that is at times heartbreaking. There are occasions where the film slightly loses track, mixing Victorian ideals with modern sentiments. A scene in which Alice tells her spinster Aunt (Frances de la Tour), “you’ll need to talk to someone about these delusions” is not only smug but completely at odds with the setting of the film.This much-hyped Disney offering appears to have been made to cash in on the recent trend of 3D films, and like recent blockbuster Avatar it has sacrificed plot for visual effects. Burton’s more inventive tendencies have been curbed leaving a successful Burton/Carroll collaboration an elusive concept.

Tom Bonnick

As of March 8, awards season may have been over, but for all of you haters who thought that would mean idly speculative newspaper commentary also being done with for the year — ha! Think again. For what would any “significant” cultural event be without its post-game analysis, I ask you? Possibly all the better for it, but that’s a story for another day.

Oscars night yielded few real surprises, but critically, just enough raised-eyebrow, I-sort-of-wasn’t-expecting-that moments (at least in the last half-hour) to make following the whole thing on YouTube and blog feeds not seem like the biggest waste of time imaginable (that would be watching the Grammys).

Devoted followers of these pages — and while we’re on the subject, I know there are some; I got sent all kinds of pissy letters after last issue demanding to know what I have against the Academy (for the record, nothing; I just think they’re a bunch of slightly reactionary sentimentalists who only sometimes get things right) — will remember that I predicted that Avatar would win Best Picture, but that Katherine Bigelow would win Best Director for The Hurt Locker.

In the event, The Hurt Locker did rather better than that, winning — as if anyone needs reminding — not only the top two prizes, but also statues for Best Editing, Best Original Screenplay, and some sound awards no-one really cares about. As much as it’s never a good idea to look a gift horse in the mouth and question how or why Bigelow’s low budget, little-seen Iraq movie did so well, its victory over Cameron’s behemoth does have some interesting lessons.

It’s quite likely that the reason The Hurt Locker so trounced Avatar is because this year, for the first time, the Academy introduced a system of weighted voting, and so whereas on previous occasions, everyone just chose one film, this time the shortlisted nominees were ranked from one to ten. Avatar, a film which polarised opinion, will certainly have got a lot of first-place votes, but probably not so many second or third choices. The Hurt Locker, on the other hand, evidently fared very well all round. The fact that there were twice as many nominees will also have helped Bigelow’s chances: ten films dilute the vote and reduce the chance of a runaway winner, which Avatar looked sure to be at one stage. Finally, The Hurt locker won because the anti-Hurt Locker campaign simply kicked in too late: by the time one of the film’s producers had been barred from the ceremony for sending anti-Avatar begging letters to voters (hey guy, here’s a tip: if you’re not Harvey Weinstein, don’t try muscling a win. That’s not for novices) and mutterings of plagiarism and lawsuits had begun to emerge, most voters had already cast their ballots.

And so, with that mystery solved, on to some of the other questions the evening presented: namely, would Steve Martin be funny? Why was Lauren Bacall not being allowed to accept her Honorary Award on the night itself? And, with Precious nominated in so many categories, which token black face (Morgan? Denzel?) would the camera cut to at every mention of the film’s success?

Well, the answers are, respectively, “Sort of, but only sometimes” (best joke of the night: “Everyone who works with Meryl comes away thinking two things – ‘can that woman act’, and ‘what’s with all the Hitler memorabilia?’”), “Because the Academy are idiots who think Hannah Montana has more star power than The Woman Who Was Vivian Rutledge”, and “Oprah”.

I think that about wraps everything up. The only question I have left is, why are there butterflies all over Bigelow’s dress?

Tom Bonnick

There is a lovely advert floating around on the Internet featuring Martin Scorsese, in his capacity not just as acclaimed director, but also dedicated film preservationist. He claims to have unearthed three pages of never before seen Hitchcock material, which he will endeavour to commit to film exactly as the master of suspense would have done himself, and the result is a very clever, lovingly crafted pastiche. I shan’t spoil the ending here, but suffice to say, it isn’t just a promotion for the World Cinema Foundation.

Shutter Island, Scorsese’s first feature film since 2006’s The Departed, is just as ridden with Hitchcock-ian tropes and horror cliché, but to far less endearing effect: it was only when the credits started rolling at the end that I realised that this time the director is being serious. Shutter Island isn’t a parody, or a viral marketing campaign; it’s just very disappointing.

The year is 1954, and Leonardo DiCaprio — who, it has been widely noted, was clearly so taken by the South Boston accent he cultivated for his last outing with Scorsese that he has simply refused to relinquish it here — plays Teddy Daniels, a US Marshal who arrives by boat to investigate the disappearance of a patient from a hospital for the criminally insane (what else?) located on the eponymous island.

Evidently, the four-year break from filmmaking has not been good for Scorsese. He is like an addict, and his drugs are movies — I mean that in a good way — but this is one big overdose, taken (or made; I’m not really sure how this analogy is working) to combat the withdrawal symptoms. Everything about Shutter Island is produced on a grandly cinematic scale, except for the story, which, beyond its ability to treat the camera to yet another money-shot of precipitous cliff faces, is handled with faint indifference.

And this is a real shame, because deep down, there actually is quite a good tale to tell — indeed, one that has already been told, in the novel by Dennis Lehane which is the film’s source material. The story is rather odd and a little convoluted sometimes, but, if Scorsese hadn’t allowed himself to get so bogged down in obeisance to directors of yore, one that could have been told engagingly and with real panache.

Instead, what we have in Shutter Island is a piece of work which is practically forensic in its homage to the thriller genre, but almost completely devoid of passion. The twists upon which so much of the plot hinges (and again, I shan’t ruin them here, but I’d say that it’s pretty damning that I have fewer qualms with doing so for a film than a commercial), however intellectually challenging — which is still only a little bit — are uninteresting, and when the big reveal comes, even it feels like one which has been used a few too many times before. There are, it’s also worth mentioning, far too many puzzles being wound and unravelled at once, and if it feels like I haven’t given any real information as to the actual story, it’s only because with the slightest nudge the whole sandcastle of mystery would collapse at my feet.

Perhaps Scorsese realised all this, and compensated accordingly with a cast list that gives new meaning to the aphorism embarrassment of riches (it really is rich, and they should all be embarrassed to be included in it). The credits read like a who’s who of gothic character actors: Ted Levine (otherwise known as Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs), John Carroll Lynch (or, The Guy Who Probably Dunnit in Zodiac), Jackie Earle Haley (soon to play Freddy Krueger in a Nightmare Before Elm Street remake) and, best of all, Max von Sydow.

I did my very best to care about a film with so many excellent faces attached to it — honest, I did. But Shutter Island is the filmic equivalent of a super-group, and so perhaps it makes sense that it’s nowhere near as good as any of its influences — after all, who’s ever liked Velvet Revolver more than Guns ‘n’ Roses?