Going Their Own Way

AS Mull Theatre prepares for its final season in Dervaig before a move to a new home next year, theatre critic NEIL COOPER looks at the theatrical developments in Mull and Pitlochry
 

WHEN THE DOORS of the 43-seat Mull Theatre open this week for Yasmina Reza’s international smash hit, ‘Art’, their first production of the summer, it will mark the beginning of the end of an era that began 40 years ago in a converted barn.

It was here that a young couple, actors Barrie and Marianne Hesketh, decamped away from big city bustle and founded their own theatre company. What was originally known as Mull Little Theatre just outside Tobermory put the tiny island venue on this country’s cultural map long before the rise of highland touring in the decades that followed.

Now, as Mull Theatre prepares to move into its new home, a purpose built state of the art ‘cultural centre’ in nearby Druimfin, the company itself will morph into a primarily touring venture.

Meanwhile, on the mainland, Pitlochry Festival Theatre is already up and running with its own summer season. Despite the tranquil surroundings of the theatre, its high quality production values are more on a par with London’s West End than the traditional end-of-the-pier idea of what such seemingly traditional rep theatres are about.

So, while a programme made up of Agatha Christie, Oscar Wilde, Alan Ayckbourn and William Shakespeare may appear sturdily safe, a closer look reveals a lot more going on in a season consciously – and provocatively – titled Questions Of Power.

Similarly, Mull Theatre pitches in with a contemporary classic which sits alongside one of the theatre’s old favourites and a radical reworking of Shakespeare.

None of this activity, however, has been a sudden reinventing of the wheel by either theatre. Rather, new elements have been introduced into each programme gradually

Pitlochry’s artistic director of three years, John Durnin, maintains his season is about “continuing stretching what we’re about, and confounding the idea of what a Pitlochry season is about,” Similarly, Alasdair McCrone, artistic chief of Mull Theatre for more than a decade, maintains that his programme for this swansong season for the company’s old space will be about “going out with a bang, and putting on the best of the past, present and future of Mull Theatre.”

Already up and running at Pitlochry are Oscar Wilde’s ‘A Woman Of No Importance’, Giles Havergal’s adaptation of P.G. Wodehouse’s ‘Summer Lightning’, and Alan Ayckbourn’s ‘Man Of The Moment’.

This deceptively gentle start to the season offers some surprising stylistic approaches, while in the Ayckbourn, which Durnin argues is “an extraordinarily dark comic assault on fame and the media, and how a particular section of society controls how things are perceived,” there is the novelty of a functioning swimming pool onstage.

Things really warm up with the arrival of ‘Chimneys’, a ‘lost’ Agatha Christie thriller which opens next weekend. While such ‘neglected classics’ have usually been left on the shelf for a very good reason, as with speculation over the disappearance of British crime writing’s grand dame, the removal of the potboiler – adapted from a pre-Poirot, pre-Miss Marple novel – from the schedule back in 1931 is itself something of a mystery.
 “Agatha Christie hated politics,” according to Durnin, “and usually avoided it in her work, but here she too looks at how power works and manipulates how we think.”

Over on Mull, ‘Art’, Yasmina Reza’a meditation on male friendship and the commodification of culture as commerce, will have marked the play’s first genuine production in this country beyond more celebrity friendly franchises.

In stark contrast to such uber-cool lines of inquiry, later next month the company will revisit a perennial favourite first produced more than 20 years ago. ‘Old Herbaceous’ is a one man play by Reginald Arkell, which concerns the life and times of a country house’s head gardener.

Having first played Mull in 1985, it was revived in 1987 and, in keeping with the theatre’s respect for its own history, will be performed by Robert Paterson, who also appeared in the original.

Later in the season, Pitlochry will offer meatier fare in the shape of the stage version of ‘The Grapes of Wrath’, John Steinbeck’s depression era slice of backwoods Americana. A sure fire hit simply on familiarity alone, the novel’s adaptation follows last season’s success with Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’.

Meanwhile, Mull will capitalise on family audiences no doubt dragged to the island on the back of the Balamory factor with ‘Egg’, a piece of clown theatre designed for all ages. It’s with Shakespeare, however, that both seasons begin to look really interesting.

Pitlochry’s ‘Hamlet – The Actor’s Cut’ takes a rarely performed look at The First Quarto – a text published by actors in 1601, two years after Shakespeare’s own production – which takes a far leaner look at the troubled Danish prince.

Mull’s five-person take on ‘Macbeth’, meanwhile, is a tribute to the Heskeths, who produced a version of the play in which they acted alongside puppets. McCrone’s production will similarly make a virtue of its venue’s intimacy, while at the same time taking advantage of 21st century technology.

“Remarkably,” says Durnin, “this ‘Hamlet’ is the first Shakespeare at Pitlochry since 1983. It’s an unusual version to be doing, because it’s very fast and very modern.” Of his ‘Macbeth’, McCrone suggests that “Where the Heskeths used puppets, we might use web cams and digital animation.”

None of this activity, however, has been a sudden reinventing of the wheel by either theatre. Rather, new elements have been introduced into each programme gradually, so that they now sit alongside more traditional elements without appearing to rock the boat.

A couple of seasons ago for instance, Pitlochry produced John Clifford’s imagined history play, ‘The Queen Of Spades’. Conor McPherson’s pub-bound shaggy dog story, ‘The Weir’, followed, while last season, Frank McGuinness’s familial exploration of personal identity, ‘Dolly West’s Kitchen’, was given a major platform.

Likewise, for every ‘Whisky Galore’ and ‘Para Handy’, Mull has produced all three of contemporary wunderkind Martin McDonagh’s first trilogy of plays, ‘The Beauty Queen Of Leenane’, ‘A Skull In Connemara’ and ‘The Lonesome West’. Apart from the first play, these scatalogically crazed, often brutal works have yet to be produced by any theatre in this country.

Mull also produced Michael Frayn’s ingenious West End hit, ‘Copenhagen’, and last year transferred their own work to the West End via a new Peter Arnott play, ‘Cyprus’.

“Pitlochry is sometimes characterised as matinee coach party theatre,” Durnin observes, “but we have an audience willing to be challenged. We still find some of the old perceptions from 20 years ago are still bandied about, which is so patronising and grotesquely misjudged about the audience here.”

Other institutions might want to take note from what Durnin sees as “a demographic timebomb. These people now in their 40s and 50s grew up in some of the most interesting times of the 20th century, and are open to new ideas and ambitious ideas, so I get very angry when I hear this canard about Pitlochry audiences being grey-haired and old-fashioned.

“Pitlochry’s always going to be quite different from the rest of the Scottish theatre network, but we’ve taken the first steps to becoming a forward thinking, wider ranging company. It takes a long time to understand how this creative engine works. I understand that now, and I know where I want to take it over the next 3 years.”

Mull will have even more radical changes to accommodate when the company move into their brand new lottery funded centre. Based in an old farmstead rented from the Forestry Commission in Druimfin, it will be more of a production centre than a theatre, allowing companies to rehearse and develop ideas which can then be toured.

“It’s a theatre that isn’t a theatre,” is how McCrone sees it. “We’re about to rebrand, and, in the current funding shake up, become one of the few producing theatres actually geared up for touring. It’s another setting from the one we have now, but it’s quite inspiring, and will change completely how we programme things.”

Both Pitlochry and Mull then, have their eyes firmly fixed on the future. For Durnin, he’s keen to make clear that “Pitlochry is an ideas based company, we’re a 21st century arts organisation that’s about very serious things.”

For McCrone, “I find audiences respond to being treated with respect and not patronised, and end up demanding more. Mull has its advantages in that way. When I look around the rest of the Scottish theatre scene, I’m very happy to be here.

“It’s a new challenge, and we’ve always embraced change, even when it was just me, a portakabin and no money. No two years have been the same, and now things are changing again. It’s always a bit nerve wracking when you embark on a new venture, but there’s a new energy there now which is very exciting to be around.”

A Woman Of No Importance, Summer Lightning and Man Of The Moment currently in rep; Chimneys opens June 1; Pitlochry Festival Theatre season continues until October. Art opens Mull Theatre on May 26; season continues until September.

© Neil Cooper, 2006

 Links

• Mull Theatre
• Pitlochry Festival Theatre