Monday Miscellany

Things happening this week that have caught my eye.

• Peter Pan is a bit whimsical for my taste, but the new production by the National Theatre of Scotland opening on Friday in Glasgow has been re-written by David Grieg, which mean it's well worth taking a look. I went to see his play Dunsinane earlier this year at the Hampstead Theatre. Two things about it:
(1) it is a sequel to Macbeth;
(2) it is one of the best new plays I have ever seen.
If you missed the original Hampstead Theatre / Royal Shakespeare Company run, there could be good news. I have heard that the National Theatre of Scotland is considering its own touring production of Dunsinane.
King's Theatre, Glasgow, 23 April to 8 May

• Gil Scott-Heron is in conversation with the ebullient publisher Jamie Byng tonight before embarking on a week-long tour in the UK and Ireland. Jamie writes about his personal Gil S-H backstory in the Guardian.
Purcell Room, London, 19 April

• Jannis Kounellis, from Friday, is the stand-out opening of the week. The Greco-Italian is a very significant artist who continues to produce work of exceptional quality and intellect. His show at Modern Art Oxford in 2004 was a highlight of that year; this show might well be a highlight of 2010.
P3, London, 23 April to 30 May

• David Remnick is the Pulitzer-wining editor of the New Yorker who has written a new Barack Obama biography - that's a high-level combination. At 672 pages, it is very long; like so many books nowadays, this suggests either an indulgent trend or a marketing gimmick to hint at value-for-money. Still, most of those who have taken on the task of reading it seem to have found it largely worthwhile (see, for example, Garry Wills' review in the New York Times). Picador is publishing the book in the UK in a little under three weeks' time; in the meantime, here's a Q&A at the Telegraph.
Picador, 7 May

• Billy Bragg's Pressure Drop opens today. An evening that is part-gig, part-play and part-installation suggests something less than coherent, but anything named after the Maytals' reggae track and featuring Bragg's 1980s classic A New England - made famous by Kirsty MacColl's 1985 cover - is tempting.
Welcome Collection, London, to 12 May

• After opening last year at London's Young Vic, Pictures from an Exhibition gets a brief run at Sadler's Wells from Friday. It's inspired by Mussorgsky's famous piano piece, which you can hear here with full orchestration and conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen and is the work of choreographer Frauke Requardt and director Daniel Kramer, recently appointed an associate director at the Young Vic.
Sadler's Wells, London, 23-24 April

• I spent too long at the site Letters of Note before before spending even longer at its sister site Letterheady, both of which do exactly what their names would suggest. Good work from the curator Shaun Usher and congratulations on the baby.
Letters of Note and Letterheady