Category Archives: Uncategorized
Selkie
A Play A Pie and A Pint
Oran Mor Glasgow
Mon, 25 April, 2016 — Sat, 30 April, 2016
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Written by Kay Singh, the third recipient of The David MacLennan Award, Selkie is slightly confusing with its mix of Scottish and Japanese storytelling. Directed by Caitlin Skinner, recipient of the 2014 Tom McGrath Maverick Award.
Meet Mac (Ross Mann), pill popper and hapless drunk in his wreck of a flat. He is having premonitions/illusions (take you pick – it is never clarified) of masked spiritual guides who persuade him to travel to his home island without any need of a ferry. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to roll up your trousers and wade over to an Scottish island of your choice? CalMac wouldn’t be so pleased but it would mean our islands would be accessible for all. Such is the nature of artistic license that Singh employs to convey that perhaps his mother is a Selkie that inexplicably disappears in search of skin when Mac was younger, probably putting him on his path of inebriated misery in the process.
Equally aloof Old Man (Keith MacPherson) is Mac’s unwelcoming father who won’t invite him in after so many years apart. It is only when Mac pleads with him that he begrudgingly lets him stay, never letting his whisky out of his sight. What a charmer! The Woman (Melanie Jordan) is never given a voice , sad and passive throughout. This play is in need of some humour to keep the audience wanting to relate to the central character who – despite a good performance – seems to be a lost cause.
Reviewer : Clare Crines
Blackout
Tron Theatre
Glasgow
19th – 23rd April 2016
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The fragility and contrastingly robust attitude of many different gods (group of drunks ) are under the microscope in this collection of interviews adapted for theatre. Not theatre for the faint hearted- it is what it is, a mass confession of all the capers, tragedies, stupidity, self hatred, loss and illusion that most recovering / or not alcoholics have to face and forgive.
This is tackled head on : no pussy-footing around the gay encounter gone wrong, no amount of microwaving or oven drying the piss saturated jeans of an alcoholic will ever lead to getting laid when he has almost set his hearts desire’s house alight melting his linoleum with his chargrilled remnants in the process. Stories to write blues tunes to. You couldn’t make this stuff up… if it wasn’t so real it would be funny. But that’s what’s so cool about this, it is funny. Although we might not directly relate to peeing from the top of Edinburgh’s Scott Monument we can visualise it easily enough. We are struck by the vulnerabilities and craziness excessive drinking provides, the sheer boredom that sobriety brings and the difficulty not so much in stopping but in staying stopped. Three female performers( Camille Marmie, Miriam Sarah Doren and Beth Kovarik) and two male (Ben Clifford and Mark Jeary) take us on a roller-coaster ride of scenarios that was recorded by writer/performer Mark Jeary.
Minimalist producer Callum Smith who leads Showroom, a platform for independent artists and small companies, has trumped the excellent How You Gonna Live Your Dash which was performed at the CCA in January this year.
Director/Designer Paul Brotherston who worked as Assistant Director in The Citizens Lanark: A Life in three Acts brings out the best in the already superb cast who between them have performed in television series Outlander, Oran Mor’s A Play, A pie and A pint and Bard in the Botanics. Accomplished Lighting Designer Simon Hayes ( Enchanted Forest in Pitlochry ) illuminates what proves to be challenging and riveting contemporary theatre that pushes boundaries re-humanising and re-dignifying our otherwise objectification of the common drunk.
Reviewer : Clare Crines
There Is Someone Who Hates Us
Play A Pie And A Pint
Oran Mor
Glasgow
April 11th-16th
13:00
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This play by Brazilian playwright Michelle Ferreira, adapted for the production by Lynda Radley and directed by Amanda Gaughan, is a dark and claustrophobic journey into the relationship between an unlikely couple. Fiery, lanky Brazilian, Maria, played by Maria De Lima, has brought petite, reserved and Scottish, Cate, played by Eilidh McCormick, to a small flat in Sao Paulo in the hope that a change of scene will kick-start their faltering relationship.
The flat was owned by Maria’s grandfather, who, it transpires, tortured opponents of a former repressive Brazilian government.
Maria can be pretty ruthless too, as she shows with her treatment of an injured bird that collides with the window of the flat.
Cate is worried by the noises in the old house and after a wild party where she was ridiculed by some of Maria’s friends, the doorbell rings and opening the door reveals a rudimentary homophobic drawing scrawled across it’s breadth.
Further incidents continue to unsettle Cate and it turns out that the young white son of a neighbour is the source of the trouble. The police aren’t interested in taking any action, much to Maria and Cate’s disgust. Without spoiling the plot things come to a nasty end and we are left wondering if there is any future for the pair.
This play also exposes the fact that attitudes to homosexuality in Brazil haven’t progressed and that the country can still be a dangerous and oppressive place.
Paticular mention has to be made of the sound and lighting, which were very effective in mirroring the changing moods and subtle shifts in the course of the unfolding drama. An intriguing piece.
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Reviewer : Dave Ivens
The Iliad : Cast News
The Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh has announced the full casting for its epic production of the classical Greek poem, The Iliad, directed by its Artistic Director, Mark Thomson. Olivier Award nominee Melody Grove, currently nominated for ‘Best Actress in a Supporting Role’ for her critically acclaimed performance alongside Mark Rylance in Farinelli and the King in London’s West End last winter, will perform in this lavish and visceral production that explores the basic human emotions of love, jealousy and revenge against the backdrop of the Trojan War. This will be Thomson’s final production, as Artistic Director, after 13 years at Scotland’s largest producing theatre. The Iliad will run from 20 April to 14 May.
Melody will perform alongside a large, ensemble cast including Jennifer Black (who last worked with Thomson on Six Black Candles), Peter Bray (Twelfth Night, Shakespeare’s Globe), Emanuella Cole (who has featured on popular TV shows such as Eastenders, Doctors), Richard Conlon and Ron Donachie (both last seen at The Lyceum in The Crucible), Amiera Darwish (last seen at The Lyceum in Crime and Punishment), Ben Dilloway (Chicken, Paines Plough/ Hightide), Mark Holgate (who has featured on popular TV shows such as Coronation Street, Doctors), Reuben Johnson (who has featured on popular TV shows such as Doctor Who, Casualty), Daniel Poyser (who has featured on popular TV shows such as Waterloo Road, Coronation Street), and Ben Turner (who has featured in films such as 300: Rise of an Empire).
The Gods of Olympus take their sides and the fates of all men hang in the balance. On the battlefield of Troy the scene is set for the final conflict to claim the beautiful Helen. Only the invincible Greek warrior Achilles can tip the scales of war to glory or defeat, but humiliated by his leader Agamemnon, he is stubbornly refusing to join the fray.
The Iliad is a great tale about gods and heroes, love, jealousy and revenge and unveils the tragic and bloody climax to the 10 year siege of Troy; the darkest episode in the Trojan War. Homer’s Iliad is often credited as being one of the first known pieces of literature in Europe (dating back to approx. the 8th century BC) and the oldest human narrative about war. The themes of battle, displacement and anger are as relevant now as they were when written in ancient times.
Chris Hannan
This new version of The Iliad has been written by Scottish award-winning playwright and novelist Hannan’s previous work at The Lyceum includes Crime and Punishment (a co-production with the Citizens Theatre, Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, 2013) and Elizabeth Gordon Quinn (National Theatre of Scotland, 2006). His work has also been produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company, Old Vic Theatre, Bush Theatre and Traverse Theatre.
Award-winning director Mark Thomson joined The Lyceum in 2003 and during his tenure he has directed over 30 productions including, in recent years, Waiting for Godot, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Union, Takin’ Over the Asylum. He won Best Director at the Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland 2015 for The Caucasian Chalk Circle which also saw The Lyceum nominated for 17 awards, winning an unprecedented 6 awards for its 2014/2015 season.
Mark was previously Artistic Director of the Brunton Theatre Company from 1997 until 2002 and prior to that Assistant Director at the Theatre Royal Stratford East and the Royal Shakespeare Company and an Associate Director at Nottingham Playhouse.
He leads a stellar creative team that includes designer Karen Tennent (recent credits at The Lyceum include The Caucasian Chalk Circle); Lighting Designer, Simon Wilkinson (recent credits at The Lyceum include The Weir); Costume Designer, Megan Baker (recent credits at The Lyceum includeUnion) and Composer/Sound Designer, Claire McKenzie (recent credits at The Lyceum include The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe).
Director Mark Thomson says: “Chris Hannan’s clever adaptation of Homer’s The Iliad is fresh and classical and conjures an ancient world to engage with timeless human quandaries. A big story of war, lust and anger. Of the humans and the gods.”
Writer Chris Hannan says: “On the simplest level The Iliad is an action-packed love story set during the Trojan War, in a world crying out for forgiveness.
I was attracted to it because it feels like a story from the time when the world was young. Things are being experienced for the very first time; the grief of Achilles for Patroclus overwhelms not only him but the gods – the entire universe is turned upside down by his sense of loss.
Moral chaos in the universe. Ring a bell? “
Uncanny Valley
This was a cracker of a show, for older kids and adults alike. I can’t find a way to fault it. It’s an interactive affair, tightly constructed but still with room for the audience to shout out answers, have a go at narrating and get drafted in on stage for a cameo. It’s the story of a withdrawn teenage girl, Ada (Pamela Reid) and OKAY (Outstandingly Knowledgeable Android Youth), the robot that she’s created who is at risk of being sent to its destruction by the technophobic town mayor (Kirsty Stewart), It also asks an outstandingly varied array of questions about what it means to be human, and in what ways that might differ from a robot, packed into the confines of a fast-paced and intriguing show that runs at 70 minutes.
Rob Drummond, already known for successes with his adult shows Bullet Catch and Quiz Show, not only wrote this one, but acted as the ebullient school teacher who bounced out on stage right from the start, and the eager but frustrated adoptive parent of Ada. Kirsty Stewart who played the anachronistic mayor (with just enough touches of a Hogwarts teacher with her feather quill) and the excitable foster mother gave a particularly commanding, humorous performance. Pamela Reid as Ada looked so haunted and sad through most of the show we grew attached to OKAY along with her and really feared for its demise. The small cast were slick and enthusiastic, and drew their young crowd along with them on the quest to tell the difference between human and robot. They were keen from the outset to treat the children’s opinions with great respect, and the young audience didn’t disappoint either; answering questions from a place of deep thought, and due to brisk pacing, remained completely engaged throughout. No easy feat for 8 to 12 year olds for over an hour!
The set was simple but very effective, especially its use of lighting. The sound effects worked beautifully to make the sound of the robotic voice and eerie noises to raise the spook level. Amongst the drama and the soul searching, there was a smattering of silly antics and toilet humour to keep the kids laughing and the atmosphere light. Even though it was lighthearted and fun, this play asked some very deep questions to stimulate some thought about the role of robots in our lives forty years down the line.
The main climax of the play and the the main point of the debate came down to the ‘Turing Test’, a test devised by Alan Turing, the famous mathematician to see if a machine of artificial intelligence could fool people into believing it was human, then it would have reached a major milestone. My son had a crack at answering how long it would take someone to read the entire contents of the internet if they read 24/7. His guess was the highest at 1,000 years, but was way off the estimate of 57,000 years! Questions for the robot were gathered from members of the audience, who came up with some great ideas, like ‘can you recognise yourself?’, ‘are you aware that you exist?’ and, ‘do you love anyone?’ and integrated into the story line of the Turing Test. There was one particularly bright spark who came up with ‘do you value your own life?’
It opened up an entire world of new conversation with my 12 year old son on the walk home. What range of factors made a personality? What was the difference between having true empathy and faking it? All the way home…Which as it was the whole point of this highly engaging and thoughtful show, commissioned by the Edinburgh International Science Festival and Imaginate, I would rate it a grand success. I wonder what the future will hold. If the up and coming generation are all so equally engaged, then the future is in good hands; human or maybe even robotic! We, the parents and grandparents, might not be around to see. Which is a shame; I’d like to know the ending.
Reviewer: Lisa Williams
Neither God Nor Angel
A Play A Pie And A Pint
Oran Mor
Glasgow
28th March- April 2nd
Script: Stagecraft: Performance:
Warning! If you are easily offended by strong language the first lines of this play are peppered with much effing and blinding, but mainly effing. King JamesVI of Scotland, in Holyrood on the day before he is due to travel south to become James The First of both England and Scotland, has discovered that England, like Scotland, is in financial ruin.
He is now in a quandary, does he stay in Scotland as an unloved ruler, or does he head for the unknown of the English court? After several bottles of wine he’s the worse for wear and to his displeasure he can’t find anyone to bring him more.
Cue streetwise simpleton William who has come into the king’s chambers thinking there might be something worthwhile pinching now that James has gone. Unfortunately he’s a day too early but is luckily spared the chopper as he knows the whereabouts of the last available bottle of booze.
Jimmy Chisholm as the dyspeptic and drunken JamesVI and Gavin Jon Wright as goofy William are perfect comedy foils and play their parts to the hilt.
Written by Tim Barrow and ably directed by Ryan Alexander Dewar, the language is a strange mixture of cod-Elizabethan and Glasgow/Edinburgh patter, but effective in the context of the piece.
The play touches on the familiar themes of the loneliness and fallibility of being an absolute ruler, the financial misdeeds of the banking sector (a major problem even then) and the gap between the haves and the have-nots in society, albeit in a light-hearted way.
Shakespeare it’s not, but it was certainly an entertaining way to spend an hour at Oran Mor. Recommended.
Reviewer : Dave Ivens
I Am Thomas
Lyceum
Edinburgh
23rd March to 9th April
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How do you solve a problem like, ‘I Am Thomas.’ Both brilliant & terrible at the same time, one wonders what the hell Thomas Aikenhead would have thought of this theatrical parody of his 1697 Edinburgh trial & execution for blasphemy. Then again, if I think about it a little, I reckon Thomas would have thought ‘what the fu3k was that!’
A few weeks ago I was reading through John McKendrick’s brillliant book on the Darien expedition, & came across the story of Aikenhead for the first time. ‘That would make a wonderful piece of theatre,’ I thought, the story being permeated with a great deal of dramatic tension, whose quaquaversal religious bigotry offered a great chance of relevancy to these our modern times. I Am Thomas, I believe, has missed a trick, giving us instead something akin to P1-P2 assembly play, but without the tall narrator from P4 giving us an overview of the plot from time to time to keep his straight.
Director Paul Hunter describes his attitude to the pastiching montage of styles that I Am Thomas incorporates into its fascinating fabric, when he told the Mumble; ‘From our earliest development on the project it felt very clear to me that I wanted the piece to have a contemporary feel… there was a range of influences on the piece, from some extraordinary Communicado shows that I saw at the Edinburgh Festival in the 1980s, to the blackly funny & oddly poiganat films of Roy Anderson.’
For me, Hunter’s choices, were ill-thought out & irrelevant, having Archie-Gemmel-era Scottish football commentators catting about the action at various stages in the play was not much better than a P6 Christmas special. But, what does save the play as entertainment are a spankingly charming selection of songs played mummer-like by a brilliantly talented troupe. John Cobbm Charlie Folorunso, Amanda Hadingue, Iain Johnstone, Myra McFadyen, Hannah McPake, Dominic Marsh & John Pfumojena are all multi-instrumentalists & sing sweetly together. Pfumojena’s voice is startlingly heavenly by the way, while the lyrics of poet Simon Armitage are, in the main, top-notch.
Armitage’s best song has the cast singing ‘Thomas Aikenheeeeaaadddd… who the fu3k is that,’ or ‘Thomas Aikenheeeeaaadddd… who the fu3k are you.’ The problem is, by the end of the play, we aren’t really any the wiser, & Aikenhead’s martyrdom towards achieving a reform’d Scottish religious landscape seems nothing but an ugly caricature. Still, as a spectacle “I Am Thomas’ should be witnessed, you may walk out at the interval shaking your head, or you may you rise in your seats at the surreal finale furiously clapping your hands & proclaiming its brilliance too all who will listen. A unusual piece this, quite groundbreak in its outlook, the production levels of I Am Thomas are so off piste its ridiculous… or is it brilliant… I still can’t quite make up my mind.
Reviewer : Damo Bullen
International waters
The Tron Theatre
Glasgow
22nd – 26th March 2016
Script: Stagecraft: Performance:
Glasgow based coups de theatre and stage crafter extraordinaire David Leddy (who earned the first Scottish practiced based PHD in theatre) is here directing his new multi-faceted production International Waters at the the much loved Tron. Lucky us! A magnificent set design inspired by architects Gehry, De Meuron and Herzog intrigues the audience with its rusty corrugated and mesh triangular components which float above and pave the way for the unraveling of the characters once we see through their superficial gloss.
Cyborg finance, the new cy fi using algorithmic or blackbox trading : essentially systems used by investment banks and pension funds, devoid of human control creates opportunities for malicious acts of cyber terrorism. The accidental glitch in these algorithms which caused the all too real 2010 flash crash or more commonly termed trillion dollar crash is a source of theatrical exploration for Leddy. So is Ronald Wright’s term, ‘progress trap’ and his recent rephrasing of of Marx, ‘each time history repeats itself the price goes up.’ Couple this with Leddy’s interest in philosophers such as Edmunde Burke and his love of the Romantic poets’ notion of the ‘sublime’ and you have a sense of what to expect from this prolific playwright.
Leddy’s characters are named from the passenger list of the Mary Celeste : Sarah Cobb(Claire Dargo) Ben Spooner- actually a bible bashing part owner of the Mary Celeste (Robin Laing), Sophia Briggs (Selina Boyack) and Arian Martins (Lesley Hart) have all paid through the nose for a ticket in the Calliban suite on a ship that reaches a very different destination than the one they thought they were paying for.
If you like puzzles, light farce with deep undercurrents of obsessional neurotic behaviour, ‘isn’t human psychology fascinating?’ then this one is a goer! Sounds are both terrifying with the pumped up volume of a ‘ringing hull of an empty super tanker’ and sublime, ‘Arvo Part’s delicate choral music and Appalachian a cappella gospel.’
There are references to Satre’s No Way Out,Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest – but International Waters plot isn’t a retelling of any of them, just an additional layer of entertainment if you recognise these as they appear. David explains, “It’s something I come back to again and again … For me it goes back to Julia Kristeva’s original description of what intertext does, which is that it increases the level of resonance in the text because it’s not just the text itself, it’s the other texts that it’s referring to, so you’re borrowing a little bit of their emotional power. I like the fact that if you recognise the reference then that little emotional jolt is added, and if you don’t it should still work. That’s the challenge – creating something where if somebody understood absolutely none of the quotations it would still make sense.”
My head sure was messed with! Money, murder, bribery, corruption, seduction, wealth inequality, greed, narcissism,hijacking, drug addiction and misplaced naivety, the refugee crises, new utopias, racial tension and fear. Just some of the themes ricocheting around the Calliban suite with a Life of Pi overtone and a lot of bodily fluids… all executed by an uproarious cast who make us laugh at the most evilest 21st century capitalist avarice.
Reviewer : Clare Crines
Bob (the tragic hero time forgot)
The Wee Red Bar
Edinburgh
March 21-24th
Script: Stagecraft: Performance:
The Fringe is coming. Its just over 4 months until the behemoth comes stalking Edinburgh’s streets, by which time one hopes every production has been refined to perfection. Clearly ahead of the game are Edinburgh University’s Gin & Tonic Productions, who are just about to embark on their first European Tour with their ‘brand new Shakespearean tragi-comedy; BOB – the play that Shakespeare would have written, could have written but never got round to writing.’ Highbrow theatre, definitely not, but a damn good, unpretentious laugh – aye, BOB certainly is that.
Set in Finland & concerning the shenanagins that go on in its corridors of power, Lord Bob is played by the charismatic Rufus McGrath, partnered so cheerfully & adroitly by flame-haired Esmee Cook. With them Ben Horner’s Siegfried is shoutily entertaining alongside his brilliantly droll wife, Sian Davies. Bubbly American Nathaniel Brimmer-Beller is charming as newsman Bill Anchor while George Prove plays a variety of parts, including his wonderful turn as a gay secretary & the scandalously-funnily named ‘Epiphany Wellington Smythe.’ In fact, the entire cast multi-part with seamless electricity, romping through their jaunty journey with a handclappy vivada vis animi.
Bob (the tragic hero time forgot), is a vehicle for G&T’s talented troupe, a sketch show-cum-panto that made me guffaw on a number of occasions. A work in progress it may be, but if these six winged cherubs refine their act they could well be one of the smash-hits of the Fringe. It is theatrical art-nouveau at its finest, a combination of the Scandinavian Saga & the British pantomime, & it works. Any longer than an hour & perhaps it wouldn’t have, but the relentless energy of this daft-yet-classic-tale, complete with its entertaining leibmotifs such as the FUN broadcasts (Finnish Understandable News) & the rhuma-rhumba jams, is a joy to watch. For me, however, the highlight of BOB was its stagecraft – the way the play was brought to life through prop-combos, light-trickery & deft soundtracking was quite stunning.
Reviewer : Damo Bullen
Prom
A Play A Pie And A Pint
Oran Mor
Glasgow
21st-26th March
Script: Stagecraft: Performance:
Prom, written by Oliver Emanuel and directed by Gareth Nicholls takes us back in time from the future to the class of 2016’s eventful and dramatic Prom Night. Four nameless characters, two male, two female, reminisce about what led up to that fateful night, which has obviously had an enduring effect on their lives.
Ably acted, with some good original songs and dance thrown in, Ryan Fletcher, Helen McKay, Martin McBride and Nicola Roy initially fire some good comic lines back and forth, with a near- capacity audience appreciating the humour as preparations for the big end of term event get under way.
It becomes apparent that the quartet are obsessed by another (nameless) male classmate in their year who is physical perfection personified and intelligent to boot, but keeps himself a little aloof. They all want to be his friend but are at the same time jealous of his challenge to their superiority as the “super cool” senior pupils at the school.
The night of the prom arrives and the foursome play a nasty trick on their classmate after he dares to sit at another table with his 4th year prom date. Mayhem ensues with life-changing consequences for all involved including the school goat(!) John Wayne. The play finishes back in the real-time future at a 2016 class reunion.
This play touched on the pain of growing up, envy and deceit but the storyline seemed a trifle forced, slightly repetitive and at times rather far-fetched. A bit of judicial editing would have resulted in a far more satisfying piece.
Reviewer : Dave Ivens
Mumble Theatre 