Category Archives: Venues

‘Outlying Islands’ (Traverse: 1 – 4 October ’14)

Posted in 4*, Rated: Outstanding, Theatre, Traverse by
Martin Richardson. Photo: Graham Riddell

Martin Richardson.
Photo: Graham Riddell

“Wide, invigorating views in a small space”

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars: Outstanding

“‘Scuse my French,” says birdwatcher John – repeatedly. This thoroughly decent young man, BA. Cantab., has had enough – again! The year is 1939 and John is on the remotest of the Western Isles with stinking socks and his gimlet-eyed pal, Robert, who is bound to get the sweet girl first. You might hear the romantic airs of Local Hero within Outlying Islands, for the Celtic soundscape is lovely, but instead I see a fab, screwed up Tintin-esque adventure amongst the fork tailed petrels.

I reckon playwright David Greig likes Hergé’s impeccable line, after all, he did adapt Tintin in Tibet  for a Christmas show at the Barbican in 2005. Outlying Islands has the same startling and redemptive quality of that blameless story. However, the play’s audience also sees scary biological warfare and delightful sex.

It is the sharp clarity of the piece that impresses most. The first lines open with “I have noticed,” and it as if the audience are the ones with the binoculars, watching intently and enjoying what they discover. A bright and acute script paired with alert, insightful direction by Richard Baron is as effective as fixer in old style photographic processing, which you’ll be reminded of. We get focus and definition all throughout, with flashbulbs and nae pixels.

James Rottger and Helen Mackay. Photo: Graham Riddell

James Rottger and Helen Mackay.
Photo: Graham Riddell

We are way out west, literally in a rock burrow, and cinematically in Laurel and Hardy territory. Their 1937 film is Ellen’s favourite but for her ‘Free’ church uncle, Kirk (!), the cinema is a place of darkness where only the Fallen gather. London, by way of the same Calvinist conviction, is a ‘gannetry of random defecation’. What’s a young woman to do – apart from prepare puffin stew? Ellen’s happiness at finding an answer in unforeseen liberty is wonderful, and Helen MacKay is jubilant in the role. Nice John or Johnny, played straight and true by James Rotger, is not a happy chappie when confronted by deep feelings – arguably like Tintin – therefore his discomfort, naked on the kitchen table, is understandable. Martin Richardson is utterly convincing as Robert. Probably amoral, certainly sensitive, fiercely rational, and undoubtedly bad for Kirk’s health, he has the dash of the pagan about him. Crawford Logan has the unsympathetic (adult) roles, playing Kirk, who is mean in spirit, calculating, a relic to be parodied, and, very briefly, the Captain of the ship that returns to take them off the island and back to …. Ullapool?

During the referendum campaign David Greig spoke of Scotland and a Scottish population that had been wearing UK goggles for long enough: ‘goggles which say you never ask questions’. ‘Outlying Islands’ has come back, post Yes/No, and offers wide, invigorating views in a small space. You might pick holes at some cartoonish excess or at the fly-away innocence of the plot or even at some speech bubble dialogue, but I saw an excellent production from  Firebrand Theatre; the same company that brought ‘Blackbird’ (not Leach’s petrel) to Summerhall in February. That was outstanding too.

outstanding

StarStarStarStar

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Reviewer: Alan Brown (Seen 1 October)

Visit Outlying Islands homepage here.

THIS REVIEW HAS BEEN SUBEDITED

‘Regeneration’ (King’s: 30 September – 4 October ’14)

Posted in 3*, King's Theatre, Theatre by
Jack Monaghan (Prior) & Garmon Rhys (Owen). Photo: Manuel Harlan

Jack Monaghan (Prior) & Garmon Rhys (Owen).
Photo: Manuel Harlan

“‘Anthem for Dead Youth’”

Editorial Rating:  3 Stars

 By 1917, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder’s designation in army speak is ‘Not Yet Diagnosed (Nervous),’ which then becomes ‘Shell Shock (wound)’ or ‘Shell Shock (sick)’. You could suffer both. Either way, it was identified as a ‘disability … caused by military service’. Watch this eager, opportune, play and you can add ‘unspeakable,’ ‘crippling’ or ‘shocking’ to the official terms.

Furthermore, pull open one of the gun metal drawers in the War Poets Collection at Craiglockhart and you’ll see an open medical register with ‘Neurasthenia’ entered alongside every one of the thirty plus names down the page. The ledger is matter-of-fact, inoffensive, prosaic for its time. However, writer Pat Barker turned that upside down in the terrific pages of ‘Regeneration,’ and Gillies MacKinnon took that book and made an excellent film of it. Now, Nicholas Wright’s adaptation tries it out on stage, with Simon Godwin directing and aiming high.

It is a fascinating, half-true story. Mutinous ‘Mad Jack’ Siegfried Sassoon (31) did meet Wilfred Owen (24) in Craiglockhart hospital during the summer of 1917. Sassoon did encourage Owen to write about the war. His pencilled revisions are all over a draft of ‘Anthem for Dead Youth’, along the lines of “No, make that… Doomed Youth’. Good man!” Sassoon’s doctor was William Rivers, anthropologist and pioneering psychiatrist. Owen recovers his health, Sassoon accepts counseling. Both officers choose to be ‘discharged to duty’. Both will return to the front line.

Stephen Boxer (Rivers). Photo: Manuel Harlan

Stephen Boxer (Rivers).
Photo: Manuel Harlan

Rivers also has another patient, Billy Prior, a boy from Bradford who knows all too well that he’s only made it to 2nd Lieutenant because the army is fast running out of the privately educated, well spoken type. The exchanges between Rivers – in a fine undemonstrative performance by Stephen Boxer – and the chippy but likeable Prior (Jack Monaghan) are the most forward and challenging in the play. Questions of class, upbringing and sex are insistently between them.

However, the relationship is less spiky between Owen and Sassoon. Garmon Rhys plays the younger man, gauche and pliable, who gains confidence and dignity by the close. Tim Delap is a debonair Sassoon, who has his own terrors in the night but whose brocade dressing gown stands them down. Between the two of them, the love that dare not speak it’s name gets treacherously close.

This production  is ambitious, brisk, and inventive, but its pace reinforces an episodic, fleeting quality. Reflective moments – Rivers dictating case notes, Mr Prior under hypnosis – are precious, but soon give way to the next happening. A burst of machine gun fire or a flash of howitzer blast are like fugitive subtitles, and the compressed script begins to sound sententious, light remarks diverting attention from tough themes. The stark set is washed out, bleached almost, and in need of some gloomy Edwardian mahogany. Additionally, the small marble of Laocoön on Rivers’ desk is a weighty feature that does its job, but otherwise, the fact that the Conservative Club on Princes Street, where Sassoon entertained, is now a Debenhams is indicative of a play piling literary stock and selling low. ‘The Parable of the Old Man and the Young’ it cannot be, although Capt. Rivers remains a merciful saint.

 

Star (blue)Star (blue)Star (blue)

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Reviewer: Alan Brown (Seen 30 September)

Visit Regeneration‘s homepage here.

THIS REVIEW HAS BEEN SUBEDITED

‘Kill Johnny Glendenning’ (Lyceum: 17 September – 11 October ’14)

Posted in 4*, The Lyceum, Theatre by

“A Lock and Load comedy with the safety Off”

Editorial Rating:  4 Stars

How mental do you like your Glasgow? I say ‘your’ advisedly, as this play has barreled its way down the M8 in that distinct, uncompromising “Up yours!” way that makes Edinburgh appear po-faced. D C Jackson has written a lock and load comedy with the safety off. ‘Kill Johnny Glendenning’ is fast, almost ludicrous, and not a little gross.

Droll Weegie humour is too dark for Strathclyde noir. This explosive plot begins with a bang as Bruce Wilson, the crime writer of Glasgow’s ‘Daily Reporter’, is to be taken out of harm’s way before his scurrilous biography of loyalist para-military Johnny Glendenning catches up with him. However, Johnny’s solid and inescapable desire for revenge makes Bruce Wilson’s survival somewhat unlikely. In fact, Johnny G. has set his sights on more than one unlucky victim, as he also goes after Andrew MacPherson, a ‘businessman’, who has cocaine deals to finance. Unfortunately, MacPherson’s laddies, sheepish Dominic (Philip Cairns) and numpty dumpty Skootch (Josh Whitelaw), mess up from accidental start to blood soaked finish. Dominic’s wife, Kimberly (Joanne Thomson), is the surprising Lady Macbeth of the piece, albiet very pregnant one, and one well in tune with Leona Lewis’s ‘Bleeding Love’.

Paul Samson (l) and David Ireland (r)

Paul Samson (l) and David Ireland (r)

The action is as lurid as Skootch’s cream suit, modelled – of course – after Pacino’s in ‘Scarface’. Johnny is a dab hand at pulling teeth and at castration by combat knife. There is lots of gunfire and a maniacal stabbing. The first act, down on Auld John’s farm, ends with bodies being soaked in petrol. Normally in Ayrshire these poor souls would be fed to the pigs, but it is onto douce Hyndland, in Glasgow’s West End, for the second act and a marginally tidier, intelligent backstory.

David Ireland’s Johnny might be a headcase but he remains a neat act. His easy movement, trim beard, and smart banter make the killer look and sound almost companionable, but the mild Ulster accent is as unnerving as the tattoos. Paul Samson as MacPherson, whose respectability is a vicious lie, keeps his character closer to the edge. Bruce (Steven McNicoll) is the journalist with no conscience who suffers that nice, well-bred, immunity from actual violence until it happens to him. He wears carpet slippers to his sorry end. Kern Falconer as scarecrow Auld John is frighteningly at one with his pigs, as well as his scary mither up the ladder.

(l to r) Philip Cairns, SteveMcNicol, Josh Whitelaw

(l to r) Philip Cairns, Steve McNicol, Josh Whitelaw

However, ‘Kill Johnny Glendenning’ is more than an unhinged caper. One read of the imaginative programme and a glance at the stage curtain for a lookalike Amazon listing of tales from Bar-L will tell you that Jackson and director Mark Thomson are firing off some cultural bullet points. Hard men and hard boys are the obvious target but you could easily add sectarian shite, corruption of the press, Glasgow itself and mobile phone apps to that list. An entertaining, close-range blast from ‘Yes’ land.

Star (blue)Star (blue)Star (blue)Star (blue)

Reviewer: Alan Brown (Seen 20 September)

Visit Kill Johnny Glendenning’s homepage here.

THIS REVIEW HAS BEEN SUBEDITED

‘Tales of Correction’ (Vault: 31 May & 1 June ’14)

Posted in Other, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by

Tales of Correction

‘Quite how to distinguish the proper from the improper is all to do.’

Editorial Rating: Nae Bad

“We are now returning to Edinburgh to get some preferment in the Acting way.”  From Love and Friendship (1790) by Jane Austen.

The Vault in Merchant Street is a good venue for Tales of Correction. It is hard by the garage of the Edinburgh Sheriff Court where prison vans deliver and collect. As it happens, and an awful lot does happen in these two short plays, the feckless, unfortunate Augustus in Love and Friendship does time in Newgate before being thrown out of an overturned carriage – and dying.

This Charlotte Productions double bill is a preview of the ‘project’ that this strong student born company is taking to the Jane Austen Festival in Bath in September where it is bound to be well received as both literary exercise and imaginative response.

Mansfield Presents is first on. We are in a cosy ‘back-stage’, back parlour space during on-off rehearsals of Lovers’ Vows, the actual society theatrical within-the-novel. As in Austen’s story, Fanny Price has a lot of needle-work to do and exactly as on-the-page(s) she has the admirable intelligence to stay quiet as all around her sound off. The red velveteen curtain is hung and the characters that matter are in place, costumes are just so, Rushworth’s sword has gone missing, and Maria is swooning over Henry Crawford. Edmund will, for sure, love Fanny and she him, but not yet. For the time being all the talk is of sexy subterfuge and Lovers’ Vows and of those related, tantalising questions: is it suitable for a private party (when ladies are present) and how does true delicacy show itself? Quite how to distinguish the proper from the improper is all to do.

Florence Bedell-Brill as Fanny is a study in self-possession; James Stewart, in wonderful voice as Mr Crawford, is the perfect gentleman for 1800, at least in her presence. Grace Knight as Mary Crawford provides the ringlets, wit and the fun whilst James Beagon and Jess Flood, as Edmund and Maria Bertram, embody good sense and trembling sensibility respectively. Leaving George Selwyn Sharpe – there’s a Regency name for you – as the loud buffoon in a cloak, which he inhabits handsomely.

The second play, Love and Friendship, with the same six actors, is writer Laura Witz’s adaptation of the 14 year old Austen’s parody of the sentimental novel. It is a glad, ludicrous and enjoyable piece where the broad comedy is still clever and effective. A melancholy cello plays on (ironically) while costumes change with bewildering speed from out of a suitcase and James Stewart, as an elm tree, sways in the wind that is George Selwyn Sharpe. Jess Flood narrates throughout and conveys just the right touch of wonder, incredulity and hand over breast excitement. Now it is Florence Bedell-Brill’s turn to swoon, which she does splendidly, taking Grace Knight down with her. James Beagon manages the rare double-act of coachman and pawing horse.

The two Tales of Correction are in order (i) heady, as in Think About This, because you should; and (ii) headlong, as in “Whoa!”, the wheels could come off. Well, they don’t because the direction, also by Laura Witz, is secure and the performances stay together.

Perhaps a young woman could review the plays in Bath. Laurie Penny would be my choice, echoing Edmund’s question in Chapter 15 of Mansfield Park, “But what do you do for women?”

 

nae bad_blue

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Reviewer: Alan Brown  (Seen 1 June)

Visit about Charlotte Productions here.

‘A Slow Air’ (King’s: 22 – 24 May ’14)

Posted in King's Theatre, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by

A Slow Air

‘Plainsong for our secular times’

Editorial Rating: Nae Bad

Written and directed by David Harrower.

As you listen to A Slow Air you applaud the art of storytelling. The Scottish Storytelling Centre on the Royal Mile is now contained within ‘Traditional Arts and Culture Scotland’. One day, sometime, David Harrower’s 2011 play will be in there and part of Scotland’s ‘rich story heritage’. Unaffected, moving, A Slow Air is that good.

For the time being Ayr based Borderline Theatre has brought this play to the King’s after touring it through 17 Scottish venues – and 1 Welsh. It is easily portable: two bentwood chairs on a slightly raised platform stage and three-fold back flats with opaque windows that admit white, blue, or amber light. Daniel Padden’s quiet sound design is pitch perfect – Celtic strings, viola (?) and piano. It all creates a spare, open, space for two actors and an exceptional script.

Morna and Athol are brother and sister who have not seen or spoken to one another for 14 years. She, a single mother, stays in Edinburgh, off the Dalry Road; he, with wife Evelyn, is out in Houston, Renfrewshire, fifteen minutes’ drive from Glasgow airport, which is significant because it is 2007, and a short while after a green Cherokee Jeep loaded with propane gas canisters was driven straight at the glass doors of the terminal building.

Joshua, Morna’s 20 year old son is fascinated by that attack, probably because it has already acquired the vivid colours of the graphic novels that he loves to read, the comic strip immediacy of his sketches and drawings. They may have been crap terrorists and anyway “fanatics are hard to draw” but unwitting uncle Athol had been inside their house to give an estimate for a floor tiling job. Joshua, never seen, always reported, has all the qualities of the eejit young artist: maddening, unpredictable, lovable. It is Joshua who, in wacky fashion, would bring Morna and Athol back together.

Brother and sister come forward and talk and explain in turn. Pauline Knowles is ballsy, defiant, Morna, who is just about holding it together, despite seriously hard breaks. Morna cleans for alliterated Rosie and Randolph in their massive house in the Grange and in their empty flat in the New Town. She hits on the idea of using the flat for Joshua’s 21st. Pure brilliant! Lewis Howden’s performance as Athol is more reflective, more crumpled than wired, but nonetheless absorbing. Athol hates golf but has to try and play it to get business. We are treated to one botched round. In sum, mellow ‘Let There Be Love’ by ‘Simple Minds’ for him; & ‘U2s’ provocative ‘Pride (In the Name of Love’) for Morna. Hence Joshua, of course.

It is the innate sense of grounded, familial, story that you get – and gets you. Athol narrates. Morna responds in kind. Parents rest on sofa suites and live safe behind their double-glazing. Place and locality are everywhere: on the bus over the Bridges, Dick Place, Craigiehall, the Black Bitch pub in Linlithgow. SupaSnaps stores are on the High Street and Atholl marvels that Joshua could sleep well on a budget IKEA mattress.

David Harrower is the writer of Blackbird (2005), a recent production of which was reviewed on this site as ‘Outstanding’. Plainsong for our secular times, A Slow Air, is gentler, but no less compelling.

 

nae bad_blue

Reviewer: Alan Brown (Seen 22 May)

Visit A Slow Air homepage here.

‘Takin’ Over The Asylum’ (Studio at the Festival: 15 – 17 May ’14)

Posted in Festival Theatre, Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre by

Takin' over the Asylum

‘Mike Paton, as the schizophrenic computer wizard, provides a deeply moving performance, rather lost in all that excess material like a thong in a duvet.’

Editorial Rating: Nae Bad

Eddie’s dreams of becoming a celebrated DJ have not exactly worked out. He’s not on Radio 1. Nor is he headlining at Radio Clyde. Instead he’s eking out a living as a double-glazing salesmen. When the opportunity to run St. Jude’s hospital radio comes about, Eddie seizes the chance to share his love of Soul music with a captive audience.

His in-patient listeners are an assortment of characters, each struggling with mental health issues serious enough for them to require round-the-clock supervision. With no other agenda than playing his records, the tables are turned. In Eddie the patients, especially the frenergetic young radio enthusiast Campbell, find a sympathetic ear into which they can pour their frustrations and confidences.

Donna Francechild’s script is partly the product of her own battle with the effects of bi-polar. Softly spoken Eddie (Alan Richardson) is its focus. He’s an ideal sounding board, reflecting the inner and outer turmoils of the patients. Richardson’s reactions in each of his onstage relationships help to reveal something far more intricate than the traditional stereotype of those with mental health problems.

Richardson is fortunate to be playing along with a highly capable cast who set their individual portraits into a greater whole. The effect is not unlike John Trumbull’s Declaration of Independence. As with the painting there is a sense of inclusion, a painstaking accuracy and attention detail but also a starchiness. It doesn’t help that Francechild’s canvas is too big; untrimmed material unstretched.

Takin’ Over The Asylum is a reimagining of a 20 year old BBC TV script (originally starring Ken Stott and David Tennant). But 1994 is not 2014. If you don’t agree then compare John Simm in the all but forgotten sitcom Men of the World with what he’s got up to more recently in Prey. Already something of a hybrid, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest spliced with Good Morning Vietnam, the uping-to-dating of Takin’ (references to podcasting and internet radio) fails to address how private an act listening to music is in the age of MP3. Why the reimaging? What was wrong with 1994 as a time and place?

What has been preserved is the episodic feel of the TV series. The sense of a single overarching narrative, one focused on a particular set of key events, is dimmed to the point of obscurity. Relationships progress suddenly out of no where. Confidences are exchanged when the scene before the characters were strangers to one another.

None of this detracts from the essential point that the onstage work in this production is of a very high order. For all that there is a lack of theatrical devices and the scene changes are painfully slow, there is some fantastic character work on offer. Calum Barbour as Campbell never flags or falters. He’s so good I even find myself warming to the twerpish Campbell. Pacy and racy, Lynsey Crawford as Francine is superb, revealing her scars with a tender emotion that presents a person as well as a victim – and I’m not just saying that because she lists kickboxing as a hobby.

Mike Paton, as the schizophrenic computer wizard, Fergus (who was an electrical engineer in the TV series), provides a deeply moving performance, rather lost in all that excess material like a thong in a duvet. Jane Black as the OCD Rosalie was truly sensational. I feel in love with her. Cared about her. And can’t bear to think about what she will have to face on the outside when she leaves St Jude’s.

Derek Blackwood’s set design is spot on and elegantly lit. This was my first venture into the Studio at the Festival (entrance via Potterrow) and it was great to see the space being used so well.

I’m not sure why they decided on assigned seating. Octopussing over the back rows, enjoying all the space that I was not sharing with the tightly packed rows below. I couldn’t help but feel that we might all have relaxed into Francechild’s razor sharp comedy if everyone else had been less constrained. But then as Matthew Thomson, as Stuart the nurse shows, asylums do tend to be more fun if you aren’t the one in the straitjacket.

nae bad_blue

Reviewer: Dan Lentell (Seen 15 May)

Visit Takin’ Over the Asylum‘s homepage here.

‘Pressure’ (Lyceum: 1 – 24 May ‘ 14)

Posted in Rated: Outstanding, The Lyceum, Theatre by

Pressure handbill

‘The clock counts down, isobars group, weather fronts advance’

Editorial Rating: Outstanding

A new play by David Haig. Directed by John Dove.

Pressure blows up a storm of anticipation. Remember the first handbill: warships steaming full ahead out of the binoculars and heading straight for you? If you have seen The Longest Day, the film about D-Day and the Normandy landings on June 6 1944 (but it helps if you’re over 50 and a boy), then remember that scene when a German officer adjusts his Zeiss lenses and sees the invasion force emerge through the dawn mist. Shock and awe big time! Impossible to create much the same on stage? Not if you can read a barometer and like the joke of employing a meteorologist to forecast shooting conditions for Gone with the Wind.

That was filming in 1939 in sunny LA County, whereas Pressure builds over four actual days in 1945 in Southwick House, near Portsmouth. US General Dwight D. Eisenhower is in command but depends upon a plumber’s son from Dalkeith to tell him what the weather is going to do. High winds mean high seas, overturned landing craft and limited air cover. Should he or should he not postpone? And, General, this is British weather we’re talking about.

Enter James Stagg PhD, RAF pro tem, ace meteorologist on tenterhooks. Cue very big charts, 5 to 6 low pressure systems, 2 high ones, flurries of weather reports, black Bakelite telephones, pots of caffeine and introduce the fact that beyond 24 to 36 hours the science of forecasting is all informed guesswork. Where, over there and by the way, are Rommel’s tank divisions? You grasp the fog of war.

The uncomplicated story takes hold very quickly. Stagg’s gloomy, inclement forecast is opposed by his American opposite number, trained in Beverley Hills and on the Italian beachheads. Lt. Kay Summersby and Eisenhower are an established item; conceivably a chaste one. The clock counts down, isobars group, weather fronts advance and Stagg suffers personal agonies of his own.

Writer David Haig is James Stagg and is a near elemental force. He stands awkwardly to attention in front of his commanders but provides reports of such detail that you … are blown away, as it were. This is a man, you sense, who cannot be sure that he is right but will move heaven and earth to move the odds in his favour.

In his life Eisenhower was a lucky general. Malcolm Sinclair plays him on a long fuse and a tight smile, unbowed by his massive responsibility and with a winning streak straight out of the end zone. It is a calm, light time (rare in Pressure) when Stagg tries to explain rugby football to the general who clearly will never understand why the ball is passed backwards.

Laura Rogers as Kay Summersby is a delight. The compassionate role moves her imperturbably to and fro between the five star general, whom she has known for two years, and the private, undemonstrative, scientist and allows both characters to open up. In this reading Summersby is probably David Haig at his most imaginative.

Director John Dove has those fine, clear- sighted Lyceum productions of Arthur Miller plays to his credit. In relation to this current production The Man Who Had All the Luck might as well be Eisenhower’s experience. In Pressure Dove succeeds not simply with pace and control but he also has stage actors in uniform to contend with, which weighs more significantly than civilian costume, and is never to be taken for granted. We are behind the lines, of course, but you never doubt that there is a war going on. There is just the one violent reminder when a plane goes ‘down’ and that seems a little unnecessary given the intensity of the on-stage action. Pressure is a taut, winning drama and you will appreciate the energy and skills of the creative team behind it, from blackout lighting to the drone of bomber formations.

It is, finally, David Haig’s play and is, I think, a major achievement. An exciting, dramatized, chronicle.

outstanding

Reviewer: Alan Brown (Seen 8 May)

Visit Pressure homepage here.

‘Uncle Varick’ (King’s: 7 – 10 May ’14)

Posted in King's Theatre, Rated: Unrated, Theatre by
l.to r. Willie John (Dave Anderson), Michael (George Anton) & Varick (Jimmy Chisholm) Photo: Richard Campbell

Willie John (Dave Anderson), Michael (George Anton) and Varick (Jimmy Chisholm). Photo: Richard Campbell

‘Inappropriate for Invergordon’

Editorial Rating: Unrated

“Don’t catch the sleeper. Stay at my place”, pleads Michael, Highlands GP, ardent ecologist and would-be lover. The married lady takes the train. So much for the ‘Swinging Sixties’.

Writer and artist John Byrne wrote Uncle Varick in 2004 and sets it in 1967 within a 20 room pile on a Highland estate, all dark wood panelling, tick-tock, and parlour room landscapes. This Rapture theatre production invites you to see it as if framed within a distressed gilt surround. Its parent, Chekhov’s Uncle Vania, subtitled Scenes from Country Life in Four Acts, and very much the choice soundboard of Byrne’s work was written in the Crimea, 1500k from Moscow where it was first performed in 1899. No mention of trains in the Chekhov, just horses to carry you between those fiendish, prime, poles of town / fabby and country /boring, ‘parochial’.

London is where Varick’s brother in law, overblown art critic Sandy, lives. First in Swiss Cottage, then in Maida Vale, but now – the impression gathers certainty – it is all proving too expensive and he finds himself cash poor, on painful legs, and has only the estate to sell. Only it’s not quite his to sell. He would have investment income and a small villa in Majorca. Of course he would, just as Chekhov’s retired professor, another Alexander, would have his wee dacha in Finland. Michael, once Mihail Astrov, has a map of the estate as it was fifty years ago – in 1917 or 1849, as you will – that charts a picture of decay as the old ways give out to be replaced by … by what exactly?

And so the doubling continues between the uncles, Vania and Varick. Byrne’s idea is canny and pretty neat but now, only ten years on, it appears a little forced, a little hung up. For all their appeal, the Scottish characters approach caricature: there’s Kirsty Morag, the old housekeeper and sweet guardian of Scots, as in ‘muckle chainsaw, ken?’ and kind Willie John in cap, sporting breeks and Fairisle sweater. He plays sweet guitar though and sings three great and apposite Beatles songs from Rubber Soul (1965). A dun, knee length pleated skirt out of Dingwall Drapers opposes a showy 60s minidress from Lady Jane’s in Carnaby Street; bold is not the word for that hemline. Inappropriate for Invergordon would do.

But there’s wild haired Jimmy Chisholm as Byrne’s Varick and he is well beyond naïve portraiture. Kirsty Morag would call him pawky. It’s a quick, spry, part that is both entertaining and woebegone. Chisholm may be dressed in baggy cords or pyjamas, dressing gown and slippers but that will not divert you from the nippy spirit of his performance. His opposition to vainglorious and impossible brother-in-law Sandy, is at Vania / Varick’s heart and while you just want Sandy to get ‘orf’ and away back to London (so strong is John Stahl in the part) you do enjoy Chisholm’s performance.

Varick is heartbroken as well, which just adds crummy self-esteem to injustice. No requited love for him from Elaine (Selina Boyack), Sandy’s second wife. When Shona (Ashley Smith), Varick’s niece and all-round lovely person, sings Cry Me a River you know the emotional landscape is unrelieved and forlorn. In such a place it is Michael, a poignantly lucid George Anton, whom you notice and listen to.

There are amusing moments: smile at the use of flock wallpaper and laugh at a couple of funny break-out lunacies – but otherwise Uncle Varick is more serious and contemplative than you might think. Can it bring Ross and Cromarty, with its estimated population of 50,000, to Greater London’s 9 million? Perish the thought! All we do have in definite motion in 2014 is the Invitation to Tender for a separate Caledonian Sleeper Service ‘in order … to develop a transformed product offering that will secure its future as a sustainable business.’ Well, all the more reason for Elaine to refuse Michael’s bed.

 

Reviewer: Alan Brown (Seen 7 May)

Visit Uncle Varick homepage here.

‘The Forbidden Experiment’ (Traverse: 1 – 3 May ’14)

Posted in Rated: Unrated, Theatre, Traverse by
Michael John O'Neill and Rob Jones Photo: Chris McNulty

Michael John O’Neill and Rob Jones
Photo: Chris McNulty

‘Halting thesis: that we exist to be dumbfounded’

Editorial Rating: Unrated

Produced by ‘Enormous Yes’, The Arches Platform 18 Award Winners.

Ever wanted to get inside a clever comic strip? Here’s your chance. For me The Forbidden Experiment is highbrow, secret, Numskulls from The Beano. D.C.Thomson can be proud of this Glasgow borne variation on its team of little technicians who live inside your head, trying ever so hard to do it right but suffering mischievous upset and body blows time and again. The play is self-conscious, ingenious and cerebrally in-your-face; but its audience, to experiment with the passive voice, is likely to end up scatterbrained.

Not that there isn’t strategic purpose. It’s there in box loads over the impressive laboratory of a set: microscope, desk microphone, molecule model, lots of important looking files marked ‘Inchkeith’ with – a bit of a date fixer, these two – a carousel slide projector and a rolling blackboard (never used; shame!). All to investigate what may have happened on Inchkeith island out there in the Firth in – specifically – 1493 and 1944/45. Subjects of study are (i) Language before we fouled it up at Babel and (ii) Language when we messed with it again but this time with practised deceit, as in the British Fourth Army on Inchkeith and with radioactive fallout from the Manhattan Project . You may think that there’s not too much to go on to join (i) and (ii) but that’s where you’re wrong and the two guys in lab coats are right, kind of.

Halting thesis: that we exist to be dumbfounded, for our understanding is forever partial.

So, there’s writer/actor Michael John [Brainy] O’Neill as Himself in a white coat, when he’s not cut up in love or sailing out to Inchkeith with those boxes. He is also penitent, freighted, James IV, who would learn to speak with God, and Mr Alvarez whose small ranch in Socorro County, New Mexico, turns out to be way too close to the nuclear test site. And there’s director Rob [Blinky] Jones, with suitable beard and always in a white coat, a natural at the lab bench you might think, but no. Laconic and spare assistance – not least on keyboards, guitar and harmonica – is provided by Matt [Radar]Regan, whose Abbot Counsellor to James IV is Gollum at his most precious. The Company is completed by Zosia Jo (too expressive for a Numskull), whose dancing in the two roles of ‘Creature’ and Michael John’s ‘Ex’ is especially demanding and pairs well with the cryptic kaleidoscope of the slide show.

Were there an ‘Only Connect’ wall on that blank blackboard then The Forbidden Experiment would have been easier. As it is its different narratives describe fraught or frenetic situations that defy sorted outcomes, let alone a conclusion. Radiation sickness breaks down Alvarez’s speech; redacted documents frustrate History, capital ‘H’. Love overturns a dingy crossing to Inchkeith. We are left with revolving images and impressions of marvellous and necessarily strained acting – O’Neill’s in particular – and the light relief of actors, as well as boffins, getting peeved with each other and with the script.

As a body of work The Forbidden Experiment is terrific and will stay in your head. Mine is not big enough to see it all at once.

 

Reviewer: Alan Brown (Seen 1 May)

Visit The Forbidden Experiment homepage here.

‘The Queen of Lucky People’ (Traverse: 29 April – 3 May ’14)

Posted in Rated: Nae Bad, Theatre, Traverse by
Eileen Nicholas as Patrice French Photo: Lesley Black

Eileen Nicholas as Patrice French
Photo: Lesley Black

‘Patrice’s impish tittle-tattle lands her in some embarrassing shite.’

Editorial Rating: Nae Bad

The last in the Traverse’s very welcome A Play, a Pie and a Pint season.

A venetian blind is prone to twitch not tweet. Anyhow, it provides the tell-tale keeking backdrop to The Queen of Lucky People, without doubt set in a tenement flat near you.

Patrice French, clerical officer, retired, lives there, which might just be the cheap end of Kelvin Drive, G20, or off the Warriston Road, EH7; either way, close enough to really notice the neighbours and to go out once in a while for a walk by the river. Not that Patrice gets out much as she prefers to be in the immediate vicinity of her laptop, spending cushioned hours within her social network of choice, ‘Lucky People’.

She has the site’s language at her fingertips. She tallies ‘Awesomes’, ‘LOLs’, and ‘Friends’ –  they’re ‘Buddies’ on ‘Lucky People’ –  with mounting glee and notes her “Record!” stats with pride. A euphoric Third-Age experience or late onset OCD? Regardless, out of sight and careless, Patrice pushes out her gossipy posts. She does not answer the phone and the blind is kept down.

Writer Iain Heggie gives Eileen Nicholas as Patrice many a winning line of solo banter. Laughs are frequent (and a little easy?) when you give an elderly character the energy and the assurance of the hip and snappy catchphrase. The script is at its best when, through the piece, Patrice’s impish tittle-tattle lands her in some embarrassing shite. You will be pleased to see how Marigold Extra-Life kitchen gloves and doggie bags, off, do the business.

It is a redemptive tale. You might argue that Patrice is a better person for having discovered – and thrown out – the troll within. Certainly Nicholas’ sure and appealing performance is of a lonely woman who is happier and kinder at the end. Sympathetic direction by Emma Callander and focused design by Patrick McGurn combine to lift a bright but brittle character into a companionable place. And so the blind goes up.

My only problem, and quite possibly mine alone, was that I could not get Alan Bennett’s A Woman of No Importance and the other Talking Heads out of my head. It is actually to compliment Iain Heggie that the thought of Bennett’s Miss Schofield (Patricia Routledge) with a lap-top is so alarming. Patrice, though, is the more forgiving creation. More of a quiche person, than a pie eater.

 

nae bad_blue

Reviewer: Alan Brown (Seen 1 May)

Visit The Queen of Lucky People homepage here.