THE repertory success of My Name is Rachel Corrie around the globe can surely be attributed to a number of factors, not least its impetus as a piece of drama and the ease of staging a play with only one simple set and a single castmember.

EVEN more so, though, the sheer resonance of the story, of Corrie’s establishment as a normal young woman of hope and principle who undergoes a journey of discovery to the heart of a personal and international tragedy, is the kind of tale you experience and then wish everyone you know had seen with you. That it’s repeated so often is a good thing for our knowledge of the world, but it’s the kind of text that should be treated with care or left alone.

Mairi Phillips in My Name is Rachel Corrie (photo Tim Morozzo)

Director Ros Philips and actress Mairi Phillips have previous where My Name is Rachel Corrie is concerned, having staged it at the Citizens in Glasgow before embarking on this Scotland-wide tour with Mull Theatre. Crucially, Phillips gives a strong and endearing performance as Corrie, the 23-year-old American peace activist who was crushed to death in the Gaza Strip by a bulldozer driven by a member of the Israeli Defence Force in 2003, while attempting to stop it advancing on a Palestinian home.

Adapted from the journals, e-mails and even answerphone messages of Corrie herself, a keen writer, by the actor Alan Rickman and Guardian journalist Katharine Viner, this is crucially not a polemic or a story which imagines our opinion or knowledge of the Palestinian situation is set when we enter the theatre. It’s literally Corrie’s own story, her journey from an excitable early-90s adolescent who immerses herself in the “trivia” of small town life and obsesses over boys she likes in Olympia, Washington, whose eyes are opened to the breadth and depth of the world on a visit to Russia.

Phillips’ Corrie is vibrant and believable, the American accent perfectly-pitched and her unceasing movement around the stage placing us right there within a state of earnest emotional restlessness. One of the great subtleties of the text is that, while Corrie’s youthful idealism presents an eventually one-sided and arguably naïve view of the overall conflict, her eyewitness testimony dramatically brings home the on-the-ground horror ordinary Palestinians experience.

More than that, though, this is a definitive tale of political and spiritual awakening with some real lump-in-the-throat moments, not least a frank and beautifully tender email conversation between Corrie and her “neoliberal” father just as things are getting dangerous. The staging amid a bedframe, some anthropomorphic table lamps and a rucksack full of gear is efficient although obviously low-budget (two small televisions detract somewhat from the impact of the video inserts), but this high-quality version is effective enough to carry an impact long after Phillips has taken a well-deserved bow.

© David Pollock, 2013

Links

• Mull Theatre

YOU’LL be a long time looking for the mythical island of Mickle on a map, yet it embodies in its long history, and particularly in the famous “Scota-Land” museum and visitor centre built to house the Crown of Destiny, the purest essence of Scottish island life.

THE Storyteller (Andy Cannon) in a (rather too lengthy) preamble introduces all the island’s characters and a great deal of its history. Here’s Dr Iona Wilson (the very likeable Kirsty McDuff), newly appointed curator of Scota-Land, trying to cope with an unimaginable disaster – the Crown of Destiny is broken. Here’s the quaint old Laird (Andy Cannon), and his frightfully posh Aunt (a nicely observed turn by Wendy Weatherby) and all the other stalwarts of island life – known on Mickle as the Mickleodeons, of course.

Kirsty McDuff and Andy Cannon

Some of them we feel we know already from a long slate of Scottish films, television shows and books like ‘Katie Morag’, but they’re all played by Cannon and McDuff and differentiated by their ever-changing hats.

Andy Cannon and Wendy Weatherby, who wrote and plays the music, have created a beguiling mixture of storytelling, panto, and craftily concealed polemic. Grown-ups will appreciate Dr Wilson’s eloquent tirade against the tired old tartan/shortbread/heather’n’haggis tourist packaging of Scotland, while the Electoral Reform Group could do worse than start thinking about sponsoring the Yes/No ballot basket of knots . “Time for you all to get knotted!, “ cries Cannon cheerfully.

Plenty of jokes for all ages, lots of repetition for the young ‘uns, a couple of singalongs, Weatherby’s lovely music and oodles of audience participation help things along but it still feels, at a good bit over an hour, a little long for an evening show on a school night.

The show was created with Mull Theatre and it shows, both in its confident approach to rural touring but also in its expectation of laughs at the mention of Caledonian MacBrayne and Oban – references which are rather lost on a non-West Coast audience. The journeys of the Crown of Destiny from Egypt to Spain to Scotland and thence to Mickle are repetitive – some judicious tightening up in order to cut quicker to the very enjoyable chase wouldn’t go amiss.

‘Always leave them wanting more’ was ever a good maxim in theatre. Nevertheless, for long stretches of time even the youngest members of the audience are happily enthralled. A good night out for all ages.

© Jennie Macfie, 2012

Links

• Mull Theatre

A THEATRE production which can pop up anywhere that an audience and a welcome can be mustered is a great innovation.

Two plays which were first shown in Glasgow’s Oran Mor as part of the A Play, A Pie and A Pint initiative are being shown around the Highlands, and Mull Theatre even brings its own seating to reach the venues touring shows don’t usually make – although this one has its own.

James Kirk and Craig Porter in Waterproof (photo Douglas Robertson)

Andy Duffy’s Waterproof is about two young blokes on a fishing trip and it’s a bit like, well, going on a fishing trip. You wait for the nuggets of philosophy and fun thrown up by the dialogue. In between you have to be patient. Perhaps if we had had the distraction of food and drink, the piece would have appeared to jog along at a good pace.

There is some powerful rumination on the nature of language and attitudes to sex. Philosophy and politics have their moment in the spotlight, too. Craig Porter, who plays Jack, has a vitality and charm which go a long way to keeping us watching. His character is a hedonistic student who lives to drink and womanise. However, he does a bit of reading too and likes to lecture his mate Gordon, played by James Kirk.

Kirk manages to convey his character’s sense of melancholy without losing a comedic dimension. He is plausible and charismatic. The production, however, is rather static. In fact, cut out a few of the attenuated pauses and it would make great radio. Indeed, the sound track deserves a mention. Seabirds, flowing water and off stage characters conspire to add aural interest.

In Scotland we have a heritage of walky, talky theatre whereby actors move a few paces, then deliver their lines. So, a whole wealth of opportunity to use movement to dramatic effect is lost.

Craig Porter, Darren Brownlie and James Kirk in From Paisley To Paolo (photo Douglas Robertson)

The second piece, Martin McCardle’s From Paisley to Paolo, had no such omission, thanks to the presence of Darren Brownlie. Not only does Brownlie know how to move, he naturally expresses each nuance of feeling with his body. An emotional blow registers in his solar plexus. A shrug is executed with a graceful wave motion and the way he positions his body at any point conveys an attitude. It takes years of effort to look so effortless.

From Paisley to Paolo is about three blokes at a music festival. Surreal dialogue and risqué anecdotes elicited bouts of belly laughter from the audience. Yet, there are valuable moments of reflection and introspection in between.

Strong writing and talented actors lend richness to rural life. A bit more movement in the first piece would lend a visual dimension and give us something to focus on. Alternatively, just give us a pie and a pint!

© Jenny McBain, 2012

Links

• Mull Theatre

MULL Theatre’s tour of Hamish MacDonald’s new play about the Invergordon Mutiny is now around the half-way mark in an extended tour of Scotland.

THE writer is more usually associated with the Inverness-based Dogstar Theatre, where he is co-artistic director with Matthew Zajac, but this project was conceived specifically for Mull Theatre, and has been some time in the making.

Hamish MacDonald

NORTHINGS: Hamish, can you tell us how the project came about?

HAMISH MACDONALD: It was written for Mull Theatre, and there is a bit of history to the whole thing, in that at the beginning I had ideas for two different plays. The first one was a play about Patrick McGill, the navvy poet who came to Scotland during the earlier part of the 20th century and worked on the tattie picking and the hydro dam construction, and became a writer.

The problem there was that I wasn’t able to get the permissions I would have needed to go ahead with that one. The play very much required use of some sections of his literary work, and that wasn’t possible, so we put that idea to one side and opted to work on this one instead, which was this idea about the Invergordon Mutiny.

NORTHINGS: What sparked your interest in that one?

HAMISH MACDONALD:  I first heard about it when my father told me about it over a beer one night. That was how it started, and then my mother told me another story about something that had happened to her friend’s father, who was working on the Daily Worker.

He reported on the mutiny for the paper, and fled to Russia in 1931. I have some letters he sent to his daughter which suggest his reasons for going weren’t through choice, but he landed there at a horribly repressive stage in Soviet history. He goes to work for TASS, which is what happens to my character Finlay in the play, so it does reflect the realities of certain individuals lives, but in fictionalised form.

A number of the sailors also ended up going to the Soviet Union, and one of them, Len Wincott, who wrote Invergordon Mutineer, ended up in a labour camp for eleven years.

There seemed to me to be a lot of dramatic possibilities in what at the time was a major international event, but seen through the eyes of ordinary people. I saw the appeal of it as a piece of theatre right away.

Harry Ward as Connal McNab and Greg Powrie as the Interrogator in Mull Theatre's Singing Far Into The Night (photo Douglas Robertson)

NORTHINGS: It’s en event that seems to be a bit forgotten these days – we hear a lot about Red Clydeside, but not Red Invergordon.

HAMISH MACDONALD: It seems to be, and yet it was a momentous event at the time. It was not just that the sailors carried out an industrial action and brought the fleet to a standstill, but there were a lot of knock-on effects as well, including a panic in the stock exchange that led to Britain’s withdrawal from the gold standard, the fear that it might spread to the army and the police, and the King being placed under armed guard at Balmoral. It had a huge impact at the time.

NORTHINGS: So how have you structured the play around the mutiny?

HAMISH MACDONALD: The mutiny itself is at the centre of the play, but it isn’t directly addressed as the focus of the action, it is spread out in fragments. The play moves around quite widely in space and time – it begins in a psychiatric ward, and there are flashbacks to the street disturbances in Glasgow in 1931, when the naval rating Connal comes home on leave for two weeks.

From that point the path to the mutiny is explored over a kind of two-week curve, but beyond that curve it also explores more widely on the character’s lives – the other two principle characters are his brother and his lover, who flee to Russia, as a number of the people involved in the mutiny did. So the mutiny has impacted on them all in a dramatic way.

Harry Ward as Connal McNab and Barrie Hunter as Finlay McNab in Mull Theatre's Singing Far Into The Night (photo Douglas Robertson)

NORTHINGS: Did that structure lead to complexities in the staging of the play?

HAMISH MACDONALD: I think everything from the design to the movement massively complements the writing. It’s hard to be objective when you are the writer, and you can only judge on audience reaction, which was extremely positive on the preview and opening night. The staging has really come together with the design and the performances in a really strong and compelling way, I think, and I feel that will get even stronger over a six-week tour.

I don’t see it as terribly complex as a piece of work to watch – it demands a bit of thinking, but it is a way of telling a story that isn’t necessarily just moving in a line from point A to point B, although there is a linear thread through it anyway.

NORTHINGS: People are well used to that kind of narrative dislocation in film and television in any case, aren’t they?

HAMISH MACDONALD: Absolutely so, and it’s interesting that you mention film, because I think the production is quite filmic in itself, and there is a fantastic sound design as part of it that gives the whole thing a very cinematic feel for me.

There are definitely demands in dealing with the various shifts of location and so on, but I feel they have been met. The director, Alasdair McCrone, has used a very clever set by Alicia Hendrick which operates around a pair of dockyard gates that can adapt to various different uses and contexts, and could equally be in Scotland or the USSR.

They transform into many different things – a bar room, a railway station platform, and various other things, and it all worked very well. The most gratifying thing for me was that not only did the set work very well, it didn’t dominate the show – sometimes these things can become largely about moving a big piece of kit around the stage!

Barrie Hunter as sailor, Harry Ward as Connal McNab and the versatile gates in Mull Theatre's Singing Far Into The Night (photo Douglas Robertson)

NORTHINGS: Mull Theatre have emphasised some of the parallels with the current situation – then as now, Britain was under a coalition government imposing austerity measures, and there was unrest on the streets. Is that parallel kept implicit in your play?

HAMISH MACDONALD: They have to be implicit, largely because it is entirely coincidental. It wasn’t written to coincide with a coalition government and the summer riots in England – it was initially written five years ago, and that is all coincidental, although what it maybe tells you is that nothing changes!

NORTHINGS: And it offers the prospect of a meaty piece of theatre?

HAMISH MACDONALD: I hope so, and I have to say that I think the performers (Harry Ward, Helen McAlpine, Barrie Hunter and Greg Powrie) have done a tremendous job. It’s a play that has been a long time in the development – there have been three big versions of it, and I think in the end we got what we wanted, and it’s a more mature production than it might otherwise have been had we got underway earlier.

Helen McAlpine as Erica Thule in Mull Theatre's Singing Far Into The Night (photo Douglas Robertson)

NORTHINGS: I believe you are also busy wearing your Dogstar hat?

HAMISH MACDONALD: Full on! I’m producing a re-make of The Captain’s Collection, which we’ll be doing at Celtic Connections in January, and then touring in May 2012. I’m also going to Kiev to talk about Dogstar’s work and how it has been received internationally at a festival over there.

The project with the Tehran group that I described on Northings is also still going on. Dogstar is a project funded company, and we can only work in response to specific projects when we get the funding.

NORTHINGS: You are also a novelist – are you working on anything at this point?

HAMISH MACDONALD: Yes, in between all that, I’m working on a historical novel which has been sidelined for the last few weeks, but is also ongoing. It’s set around the conflict that developed in the 19^th century around the idea of deep time espoused by the geologist James Hutton, and the conflict that his discoveries caused with established religious ideas. It’s set just before the publication of Darwin’s On The Origin of Species, and takes in the conflict between Robert Chambers and Hugh Miller, so there is a Highland connection in there as well.

Singing Far Into The Night is on tour until the end of October – see Mull Theatre website (link below) for details.

© Kenny Mathieson, 2011

Links

• Mull Theatre
• Dogstar Theatre Company

THERE’S a fascinating article by playwright Hamish MacDonald in the programme for this Mull Theatre production.

He writes about the experience of his father’s friend, a Royal Navy rating, in 1931 when sailors of the Atlantic fleet went on strike. They were furious about a 25% pay cut brought about by the austerity programme of Ramsay MacDonald’s government. Their action at Invergordon was tantamount to mutiny.

He writes also about his mother’s memories of journalists being hounded out of the country because of their communist sympathies. Supporting the striking sailors made them guilty of incitement to mutiny and at risk of the death penalty. Getting out was the only option.

Helen McAlpine as Erica Thule and Harry Ward as Connal McNab (photo Douglas Robertson)

These stories have modern-day parallels (as well as the austerity, the prime minister was responsible for a coalition government), but they also evoke a very different time when class distinctions were extreme, when young idealists gravitated towards Moscow and when collective action by the workers could have such repercussions that the economy was rocked and Britain had to pull out of the Gold Standard.

No denying, then, that the Inverness playwright, who is also a joint director of Dogstar Theatre Company, has alighted on a story ripe with dramatic potential and topical power. Unfortunately, in Singing Far into the Night, the material seems undigested, sometimes giving too much information, other times too little and, despite a cast of only four, never establishing whose story is being told as it meanders across the decades.

Inspired by his parents’ stories, MacDonald imagines two brothers: one, Finlay (Barrie Hunter), is a far-left journalist sacrificing everything to publish a revolutionary newspaper; the other, Connal (Harry Ward), is an experienced sailor who, although sympathetic to the cause, is no radical. Caught up in revolutionary times, however, Connal becomes a scapegoat for the strike, persecuted by Greg Powrie’s establishment interrogator, while Finlay and his activist comrade Erica (Helen McAlpine) flee to the USSR, which turns out not to be the workers’ paradise they’d imagined.

There’s a great story in there, but the script raises too many questions. Who is the interrogator and why is he so single-minded in his pursuit of Connal? Why does Connal appear to go mad? Why do Finlay and Erica have to escape Scotland? What happens when they get to the USSR that causes them to split up and what prompts Finlay to return home many years later?

MacDonald gives some clues in his own programme note but, in this dramatic form, the answers are as hard to make out as the gloomily lit set. The second act is less obscure and the actors in Alasdair McCrone’s production make of the material what they can, but it’s a story that remains more interesting in theory than in practice.

© Mark Fisher, 2011

Links

• Mull Theatre
• Dogstar Theatre
• Mark Fisher

EVEN before Chris Lee’s play begins, the atmosphere is unsettling. There is something weird happening, a quiet muttering in the background and an eerie light on the simple set.

Then it is underway. It is the 1920s. A doctor injects himself with morphine in a guest house bedroom on Iona, confessing not to a god, but to the syringe. ‘Bless me needle, for I have sinned,’ he says. There is only one other guest: Netta Fornario, who is either supernaturally possessed, or mad. They are hosted by Ruth, who carries grief with her, and ‘has a lost face’. The stage is set for a gothic drama to unfold.

Greg Powrie and Rebecca Sloyan (Douglas Robertson)

On Iona, ‘the dead overshadow the living’, Netta Fornario says. Each of the three characters is wrestling with their own pasts, and with the ghosts of people they loved or hated. Through dreams and nightmares, lies and revelations, these other characters make themselves felt, invisible presences crowding ‘this too small room’ of the stage.

It is a tiny stage, and the triangle cast generates a sense of suffocation. We see everything through the eyes of Doctor John Tyler as he inserts himself within the tense circle of Ruth and Netta’s relationship. He brings his own dysfunction, traumatic nightmares from the first world war trenches which he tries to control with drugs. He is ‘a blunt pebble thrown at calm water’ and his arrival precipitates a crisis, which heightens Netta’s madness, if she is crazy, or opens a new channel for ‘the secret chiefs’, if she’s a witch.

Ruth’s troubles unfold. Her husband is dead, and is not missed as much as might be expected. Her son Duncan is, throughout the first half, just off-stage. His unhappy fate is revealed later. By the end, the full story of the mysterious death of the title has been told, but not explained.

The play is full of memorable lines (‘If I’m ill I want to be healed, not cured'; ‘Love is possession, but it’s also surrender’) and peppered with marvellously-written spiritualist nonsense. Rebecca Sloyan, as Netta, could perhaps have made more of this script, and could have got away with being a bit more mad, but it’s probably better to understate this as she did, and leave us guessing, than to overdo it, or try to play for laughs.

Mairi Philips is excellent as melancholic Ruth and the two women convey well the ambivalent sisterliness and mutual paranoia of their friendship. Greg Powrie plays John with a certain stiffness that fits the period, and convincingly unravels as a doctor who cannot love, cures rather than heals and has his own guilty secret.

The revelation of that secret is done with technical wizardry, a marriage of film and theatre, which is a feature of the performance in this joint production between Moray-based Wildbird and Mull Theatre. The set is enhanced by a video-backdrop: interiors have flickering candlelight or the full moon beaming through a window, and exterior scenes are played out against a windswept Ionan beach or bleak moorland, complete with scudding sky. Throughout the action, waves crash on the stony beach, rain batters on the window and creepy sounds create the spine-tingling mood of uncertainty that pervades the play.

Lochinver Village Hall has a history of bringing innovative drama to this remote north west community. There has been a brief hiatus after Alex Dickson stepped down from his role as the organiser of ‘entertainments’ in Assynt, but a new team, led by Clive Sheppard, has stepped in to continue the tradition. Long may it continue.

© Mandy Haggith, 2011

Links

• North By North East
• Scotland’s Islands 2011
• Wildbird
• Mull Theatre

Alasdair McCrone, the artistic director of Mull Theatre, has a serious bit of history with this play. As Mark Fisher points out in his review, this is the sixth time that Alastair has twirled his tie and looked coy in the role of Stan Laurel (the first was way back in 1988), although he does confess that his modestly expanding waistline had him wondering if a switch of character might be in order.

Barrie Hunter takes the roll of Ollie in a play that is currently touring widely in Mull Theatre’s characteristic manner, and McGrath’s multi-faceted portrait of the great comedy pairing is well worth catching if it comes your way (and indeed, going a bit out of your way for).

Also on the road this month (and into May) is the An Tobar Commissions, a must-see double bill that brings together two of Gordon Maclean’s imaginative projects at the Tobermory arts centre, Aidan O’Rourke’s An Tobar and the Dave Milligan Trio’s Shops. As Rob Adams’s interview with the two bandleaders explains, they will also be concocting a new piece for all eight musicians especially for the tour.

Fiddlers Bid and Bellevue Rendezvous are also out and about in the Highlands & Islands, and Inverness plays host to a tasty range of treats, taking in the Treacherous Orchestra, the Scottish Ensemble, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Wee Stories and Scottish Dance Theatre, among others.

Plenty to enjoy there, even if the impending cuts in Highland Council funding continue to cast a shadow, Rumours and counter-rumours currently abound, but there is a growing feeling that the long term cultural well-being of the region is going to be sacrificed to short-term expediency, even where the resulting savings are fairly small, a situation which has the potential to do great and lasting damage.

The announcement of cuts at both a local and national level has led to the launch of several on-line petitions to allow people to make their feelings known, including one protesting the proposed cuts to music education in the region, another seeking support for the Cultural Coordinator (remember them?) in Schools programme, and another opposing the scrapping of the Applied Music course at Strathclyde University.

There has been a fair bit of recent activity on the Creative Scotland front. The appointment of Andrew Dixon as their new Chief Executive and speculation over plans to move to new premises are now followed by a Scottish Government commitment to fast-forward the launch of the new organisation – which will take on the functions currently filled by the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen – to this summer.

It remains to be seen how the new arrangements shape up, but at least it will bring an end to what now seems a rather long Transition period, and allow everyone involved to get on with the crucial business of supporting the arts in what will be a very difficult period ahead.

I ended last month with a word of congratulation for An Lanntair to mark their 25th anniversary. This month, local artist and writer Ian Stephen reflects on both the very real achievements and some things that are still to be achieved at the Stornoway venue.

Kenny Mathieson
Commissioning Editor, Northings

Alasdair McCrone as Stan and Barrie Hunter as Ollie

IF MY house was on fire, the first thing I would grab is the Laurel and Hardy DVD box set. I suspect I am not alone in that to judge by the audience for Mull Theatre’s revival of the late Tom McGrath’s bitter-sweet tribute to Stan and Ollie. When one of the actors says wistfully, “Those were the days”, someone near the stage lets out a yelp of approval.

Yet there is some quality in McGrath’s play that elevates it beyond a mere nostalgia-fest. If you have no knowledge at all of the comedy duo, I dare say there is much that will puzzle you, not least the valiant – and surprisingly successful – attempt to recreate on a very small stage the scene from The Music Box in which a piano careers down an enormous flight of stairs.

Neither are you likely to get the full measure of the many movie dialogue quotes scattered throughout the script or to work out which are original and which pastiches.

But I like to think that, in the performances by director Alastair McCrone – playing Stan Laurel for a surely unprecedented sixth time – and Barrie Hunter as Oliver Hardy, you will get a flavour of what made the unlikely pairing of a portly American from the Deep South and a skinny Brit from the Lake District by way of Glasgow the greatest double-act of the 20th century.

You will recognise it in Hunter’s understanding of the balletic punctuation that accompanies Hardy’s every phrase, each authoritative gesture in comic contrast to the ignorance of his speech. And you will recognise it in McCrone’s emulation of Laurel’s phenomenal ability to spin out the smallest of actions, such as getting out of a lift, into the most extended, and funny, of routines.

You will appreciate too how McGrath captures the sense of an unrepeatable moment of history. Brought together more or less by chance, conceived as a double act on a whim, Laurel and Hardy made the world laugh for over two decades before their time passed. But hanging over the play from the start is the feeling that the bubble must burst, that for all the joy they created, the laughter cannot go on for ever.

This note of sadness could be more forcefully played in McCrone’s production, which can seem rushed, particularly in the portrayals of secondary characters (this, despite it doing a good job of explaining the secret of Laurel and Hardy’s slow timing). But, rather like Morecambe, the Olivier award-winning one-man show that recreates the glory days of Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise, the production is played with so much affection and taps into so much collective love in the audience, it can only send everyone home with a warm glow.

© Mark Fisher, 2010

Links

• Mull Theatre
• Laurel & Hardy Tour Date

THE CAST and crew of the Mull Theatre Company were well into their current ‘island-bagging, ferry-hopping’ tour when they reached Rothesay Pavilion. This is an extensive tour, visiting 19 islands and many mainland venues, with fifty performances in just over nine weeks.

The cast, doubling as ceilidh band for the evening, kicked off the show with a cheery introduction of traditional Scottish music before the audience of sixty or so joined them aboard the ferry, heading for Todday and the big Homecoming dance – oh, and an island wedding that wouldn’t go ahead until they arrived: the meenister for the ceremony was aboard the vessel!

Island Nights performance at Rothesay, Isle of Bute

With Para Handy on the bridge and Dan McPhail in the engine room, it was no surprise that the ferry trip did not go to plan. Opportunistic Calum MacAskill, the once-famous Highland entertainer, saw a long delay as heaven sent and was all set to perform for those on board.

In a desperate effort to keep Calum at bay, the other passengers offered up their own party pieces as entertainment, with snatches from Para Handy, Whisky Galore, Kidnapped, Katie Morag and more.

The spirit of The Homecoming was well in evidence in the mix of drama, comedy, dance and song, with the numerous roles requiring the cast of four – Sarah Haworth, Fiona Morrison, Alasdair Satchel and Harry Ward – to make some nifty changes between scenes. To their credit, they managed this while retaining the integrity of each of their characters – and without appearing to be the slightest out of breath!

This was accessible, community theatre which probably works better in the cosy environment of a small village hall, rather than the larger space of the Pavilion, but with a responsive audience and an enthusiastic cast the evening danced along, with only a couple of stumbles when the thread of the story seemed to lose itself, leaving the audience momentarily adrift and having to make a bit of leap to get back on board.

However, any shortcomings in the production were more than forgiven with the witty tale of the Two Herdsmen and by the time the cast took up their instruments once more for a short ceilidh dance to round off the evening, a considerable number from the audience stayed behind to take to the floor with gusto.

Despite my feeling that not everything worked about the show – the production could have been more coherent with a clearer, unifying story line – this was an evening of family entertainment which was well received by an audience that clearly enjoyed a good night out.

© Ishbel Crawford, 2009

Links

• Mull Theatre

Last year’s Fringe brought a triumph for Matthew Zajac with The Tailor of Inverness, and success for Right Lines and Mull Theatre with Accidental Death of an Accordionist, but Highlands & Islands representation is less apparent this year.

It is good to see a revival for St Kilda, one of the major projects from Highland 2007, in the opening weekend of the International Festival programme (as well as a recital from the Lewis Psalm Singers), but a trawl through the Fringe brochure yielded only the one-man show Djupid – The Deep and outings for youth groups from Lochaber, Gordonstoun and Glenalmond, plus Tabula Rasa Dance Company in the Made In Scotland season (see this month’s interview with Claire Pençak), and the customary sprinkling of traditional music performers.

A more modest profile this year, then, but we hope they all enjoy the experience (and apologies if I have missed anyone). Back in the Highlands & Islands, the aforesaid Mull Theatre are currently embarked on one of their trademark massive tours with a new show, Island Nights Entertainments (we plan to catch up with it later this month), while Tilda Swinton and Mark Cousins will hit the road on their Pilgrimage taking hand-picked films around the Highlands in the Screen Machine mobile cinema from 1-9 August. Follow their progress on the Day By Day diary at www.a-pilgrimage.org

The Tartan Heart festival gears up again at Belladrum (near Beauly) with another stellar line-up and lots of interesting side-shows. The Nairn International Jazz Festival has suffered from not getting expected funding this year, and a shift of dates – at the Edinburgh end – that brought it into a direct clash with the Edinburgh Jazz Festival rather than the usual overlap, but still manages to offer a strong programme of mainstream jazz in the Moray town.

Public art is often a thorny subject, and the Streetscape project in Inverness has been attracting some adverse publicity over its costs and benefits of late, but the organisers are preparing for the next phase of the project. Look for the Re-Imagining The City event in early September.

As well as the interview with Claire Pençak already mentioned, we have also invited visual artist Nigel Mullan to share his challenging but fascinating thoughts on the topic of visual arts and landscape. Nigel’s illustrated essay is available as a downloadable PDF file.

Oh, and just in case anyone is in doubt, my “Recession? What Recession?” headline last month was definitely tongue in cheek. These are difficult times for funding the arts, and not likely to improve anytime soon, so all the more credit goes to those who do succeed in persevering in the face of adversity.

Kenny Mathieson
Commissioning Editor, Northings

Kenny Mathieson lives and works in Boat of Garten, Strathspey. He studied American and English Literature at the University of East Anglia, graduating with a BA (First Class) in 1978, and a PhD in 1983. He has been a freelance writer on various arts-related subjects since 1982, and contributes to the Inverness Courier, The Scotsman, The Herald, The List, and other publications. He has contributed to numerous reference books, and has written books on jazz and Celtic music.

Joyce Falconer in Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off (© Peter Dibdin)

IF YOU have seen a production of Liz Lochhead’s historical drama, it almost certainly had the actors at one end of the room and the audience at the other. This revival by the National Theatre of Scotland, however, is different. Travelling the Highlands and Islands with its own purpose-built stage and seating unit, the NTS offers a very intimate insight by placing the audience on all four sides of the stage.

Not everything works with this arrangement. There’s a moment early on when Joyce Falconer’s narrator, La Corbie, is summing up Scotland’s personality in all its variety and contradictions, and stops to imitate a “skating minister” – Sir Henry Raeburn’s ‘Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch’.

It’s a line that usually gets the whole room laughing, but here half the audience misses it because the actor has her back to them (not that that halts Falconer, whose dark, gravely performance is one of the show’s highlights).

But there are also some big gains in performing in the round, chief among them a sense of the oppositional forces at play in Lochhead’s script. In Alison Peebles’ feisty, good-looking production, the actors are forced to circle each other on Kenny Miller’s set – with its saltire on the ceiling and St George’s Cross on the floor – which reinforces the play’s mirror images.

We see England set against Scotland; Catholic set against Protestant; male set against female. Above all, we see Mary set against Elizabeth – the first, as played by Jo Freer, a Franco-Scot with chic European style; the second, as played by Angela Darcy, a fiery redhead getting on with the nasty business of ensuring her nation’s dominance over its northern neighbour. The two women never meet, yet their lives are entangled and their temperaments governed by a very similar mixture of political expediency and sexual passion.

In this way, Peebles’ fluid staging gathers a style and rhythm of its own, distinct from the ground-breaking Communicado production in 1987 in which she herself starred, but making the connection between the politics of the 16th century and the character of today’s Scotland in much the same way.

Not every historical detail is clear and the odd scene gets weighed down by the density of the political arguments, but more typically, it is a bright, sensuous and flamboyant staging of a play that has achieved the status of classic within the author’s own lifetime.

© Mark Fisher, 2009

Links

• National Theatre of Scotland
• Mark Fisher’s Scottish Theatre Blog

The cast of Our Teacher's A Troll (© Peter Dibdin)

WARNING! IF your child is the sensitive type, the kind too delicate to watch Dr Who, then you should approach Our Teacher’s a Troll with caution. For the monster in this National Theatre of Scotland production of Dennis Kelly’s new play is truly frightening. Enormous, bulbous and ugly, with a voice just as unpleasant, he is enough to make anyone think twice before leaving the house, whether to the theatre, to school or wherever it is such foul creatures roam.

If, however, you and your children are made of sterner stuff, then Joe Douglas’s production is unreservedly recommended. Because, as well as being nail-bitingly chilling, this story of young brother and sister Sean and Holly, whose new head teacher turns the school into a gold mine-cum-slave camp for his own Trollish purposes, is raucously funny.

The dilemma faced by Sean and Holly is very serious indeed. Played by Owen Whitelaw and Jo Freer, they are let down by every adult figure of responsibility in their lives, from mother all the way up to prime minister. This is what keeps the look of shocked concern on the faces of the youngsters in the audience: they can imagine it happening to them.

At the same time, the wild improbability of the scenario, the hilarious detail of the script and the brash, cartoon-like delivery of the actors (the same ones who are performing Liz Lochhead’s Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off in the evening in this touring double bill) makes the show thoroughly entertaining for those of us too cool to hide behind the sofa. This balance between the comic and the terrifying is brilliantly judged.

So too is the play’s deeper celebration of childrens’ urge to question and to test the rules. The pupils at the troll’s school have hounded out his predecessor by asking “Why?” once too often. It is only by doing the same to him that Sean and Holly restore order at the end of the play.

Grown-ups may be irritated by such questioning – and by all the horseplay with worms, itching powder and soil in the shoes – but naughtiness and adventurousness go hand in hand, and without this questioning spirit, children would be incapable of taking their own place in the world.

For this reason, perhaps it’s the grown-ups in the audience who take home the greatest moral from this deliciously enjoyable show.

© Mark Fisher, 2009

Links

• National Theatre of Scotland
• Mark Fisher’s Scottish Theatre Blog

Macbeth and the Weird woman

POWER CORRUPTS and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But watching Alan Steele in the title role of Macbeth, you see power also does a few things in between.

First, it sends you off the rails. Not only do you see visions of your dead victims, but you start clutching neurotically at your robes, panicking at the presumption of your claim to the throne. Then, once it looks as if you’re succeeding regardless of your insecurity, power goes to your head. You develop a messianic self-belief and think yourself infallible – after all, who ever heard of a walking wood or a man not born of woman? That’s when power turns you into a fully fledged tyrant.

Steele marks these transitions clearly, letting us see that his violence is a front for his inner weakness. He might have had a reasonable claim to kingship had his honourable qualities not been undermined by his own moral decline. He lashes out because of fear not courage.

Interestingly in Alasdair McCrone’s atmospheric production – a revival of the last ever show at Mull Little Theatre in 2006 – the power behind the throne is not only Beth Marshall’s lucid Lady Macbeth, but also the mysterious forces of darkness embodied by Sarah Haworth. A lingering presence throughout the show, Haworth plays all three witches – thanks to the concealed mirrors of Alicia Hendrick’s turret of a set – as well as various bit parts, until she lays Macbeth to rest in the final silent moments.

It gives her the status of puppet master – albeit a deranged one – dreaming this tragic parable into life. She is less a supernatural being than a shaman warning us of what can happen when a good man ventures into the dark side.

Performed beneath a fog of dry ice, the production makes a virtue of its small cast, not only in the efficient doubling of the six actors, but also in creating an air of no-nonsense directness. It’s a real achievement to give such a full account of the play with so few actors and it is this, rather than any startling insights, that gives the production its distinctive energy.

© Mark Fisher, 2008

Links

• Mull Theatre
• Mark Fisher’s Scottish Theatre Blog

Brian Smith and Alasdair Satchel as Cammy and the Laird of Glengirnie

MY NAME is Alasdair Satchel. I’m the education officer with Mull Theatre. From July until late September I’m playing the part of the Laird of Glengirnie in Euan Martin and Dave Smith’s The Accidental Death of An Accordionist, a co-production by Right Lines and Mull Theatre.

In this blog I’m going to try to give you a rough guide to the life of a theatre company as we embark on a Highland tour (with a stop off in Edinburgh for the Fringe). The Accidental Death of An Accordionist (ADOA from now on) is a murder mystery ceildih play. A fusion of many things. It’s really rather silly and a whole lot of fun. I think it’s one of the largest casts I’ve ever been involved with as an actor. Other actors are Helen Mackay, Annie Grace, Ed Corrie, Brian Smith, Alasdair Hawthorne, Barrie Hunter and Sandy Brechin. Our director is Mark Saunders and our stage manager Brian Gorman. We’re rehearsing at Mull Theatre’s swanky new production centre at Druimfin, outside of Tobermory.

Tuesday 1 July 2008

Cast & crew meet and costumes and props are distributed. My God, what a lot of tartan! My God, what a lot of tartan Barrie is wearing… It’s a tartan atrocity! My costume is yer classic kilt and dress jacket combo. I know that I’m going to sweat a lot on this tour already. It seems that there’s more tweed in this show than the House of Lords. No wax jackets spotted yet, though.

We have some publicity photos taken – that’s me with Brian who plays Cammy, my faithful manservant. We read through the script and that goes well. We all laugh. In the right places too, which is reassuring.

Wednesday 2 July 2008

I like warm ups – exercises and games to get yourself ready for a day’s acting. Such a lovely way to start the day. We spend a bit of time warming up and then get stuck straight in to blocking the first act. Blocking is where you look at who’s going to come in where, and when and what you do and all that sort of malarky, before you start to make your character come to life. It’s already quite funny. The characters are really clear on the page, so they peel off well in to rehearsals.

Thursday 3 July 2008

Act 2 blocking. Getting things straight and narrow. Sorting out business and allowing the story to do its thing. Incredibly, by the end of the day the whole show is blocked, and we can start to get in to finer details here and there. Ed, Alasdair H. and I have a go at working on a wee piece of choreography to back Annie (who plays Jean, a dour tweedie wee wifie) as she sings ‘Only You’ to Brian. Sandy, Mark & Annie give us a bit of help with the harmonies. I’m the squeaky tenor. At night we revel outside the new harbour building in Tobermory as it celebrates its opening by having a concert. That building likes to boogie! The Red Hot Chilli Pipers play, as do the Sorren MacLean band, who really get the crowd moving.

The strange claw-like grip that afflicts members of the cast

Friday 4 July 2008

The Claw! The Claw has overtaken the rehearsal room. Not the villain from the children’s TV show Inspector Gadget, but a strange claw-like grip that afflicts members of the cast – leading to strange chuckling noises by others. The claw can appear at any point – it can pop out behind the head of a random actor, or in the lap of guitarist. It’s a very strange thing indeed.

Mr Barrie Hunter – who plays MC John Angus – is one of the finest perpetrators of “Clawinism”. Swift in his clawing, you don’t realise he’s there until it’s too late, and you’re already halfway through a speech about the merits of a Bourbon vs. Rich Tea when you burst into laughter.

Saturday 5 July 2008

Rehearsals are going well. I’m very pleased. Our show is now blocked, in that we know what our entrances, exits are and where we stand when we act. We’ve now started to come “off the book”, or to act without the scripts in our hands. Naturally we’re going to stumble along like this for a few days as we get all of our lines in the right place, but it’ll be good when the lines really go in – and stay in.

Monday 7 July 2008

There’s a surfeit of cheese and crackers in the rehearsal room because I was given loads of cheese by two of the students from my Argyll College acting course for a party we were having. So we’re all quite happy about that. And now that some old cheese from the previous Mull Theatre tour Swindle & Death has been removed from the fridge, all is well.

It’ll be all right on the night! L-R Mark the director, Annie and Barrie Hunter (Jean and John Angus) – and far too much tartan!

Wednesday 9 July 2008

Scripts are now starting to be put down as we stumble around the stage trying to avoid falling into the scenery – particularly the black-out curtains. Yesterday we spent the morning looking at our characters and how we can develop them.

For a large chunk of the play, particularly at the beginning, we interact with the audience without a script to support us, so it’s handy to know who we are. We took turns at coming into the room in character and sitting in a chair in front of the rest of the cast, who were all in a row. Mark, our director and the rest of the cast then asked questions of the actor, who had to respond in character.

We found out some very interesting things. For example, Helen Mackay, as Lucy, was orphaned when her father was shot in a freak stalking accident. Sandy Brechin, as Aly the accordionist, told us the reason behind his wife’s mysterious Edinburgh tattoo. We tried to delve into the mysterious past of Alasdair H as Mr McCrindle, but he was so elusive that he headed us off at each pass. Perhaps he has a murky past in some sort of interrogative field? And now we’re off to the land of runs… Running and running the show over and over again until it’s as smooth as the pampered posterior of a member of the House of Lords.

The famous Glengirnie onions are among the tempting raffle prizes at the ceilidh…

Friday 11 July 2008

I must admit I’m really pleased. I think the show is in good shape already, and now we’ve just got to settle in to trying to control all the chaos. The show does need an element of chaos to make it seem true to life, but we need to be on top of it, just to make sure it’s really smooth running.

Our “newsletter” has arrived. It’s called the Glengirnie Gazette and it’s full of useful information on life in Glengirnie, the village where our ceilidh is set. We’ve chortled a lot already at the content, but have absolutely no idea how to complete the crossword….

Life outside the rehearsal room continues too. Many of the cast are enjoying the pleasures of local Tobermory restaurant, Cafe Fish, which as you might guess, specialises in seafood. Barrie who plays John Angus in the play says it’s one of the best meals he’s ever had. Some of us also took a trip out to the beautiful white beach at Calgary, at the north end of Mull, where some red-throated divers were spotted. It’s lovely rehearsing on Mull. I’m going to miss it when we go out on the road, but I can’t wait to get stuck in to touring round our rather lovely green country.

The cast of Accidental Death of An Accordionist

Monday 14 July 2008

The weekend has been and gone, we are all refreshed and fresh faced. Honest. Many of the cast decided to stay in Tobermory to enjoy the delights on offer at the Macdonald Arms, the Mishnish and so on. Others dared to brave it off the island, and return to the larger cities of our dear green nation. Apparently they have something there called mobile phone reception…

Last night a few of us gathered round at my place to tuck in to a local venison chilli and watch “Everything Is Illuminated”. A rather good film, the screen is stolen by the older man who plays the grandfather in the piece. He’s one of those amazing actors who you watch and entirely forget that they’re acting.

This morning we went straight in to a line run, or a speed run – where you say your lines as fast as you can in sequence. It’s a very good way of reinforcing the text and the order of the show in your mind. The second time that we did a line run we threw a ball about as well. If you were speaking you had the right to hold the ball, if you weren’t you didn’t. I always like these kind of exercises as it opens up what you’re doing as an actor. For instance, how you interact with the ball can tie in to what you’re trying to do with your character in that section, in relation to another. So if your character is trying not to let another person talk you can try to keep the ball out of their hands while they struggle to wrestle it from your grip. It’s a really good way to physically see the relationships that the characters have in another light. All these things you do as you build up to a putting on a show. Only four days to go before we open. It’s all going to be fine. It’s all going to be fine. That’ll be my mantra for the week.

As long as you can see the whites of the other actor’s eyes you’ll be fine…

The long arm of the law - Sandy Brechin impersonating a police officer in Tobermory

Thursday 17 July 2008

TENSIONS are building, like the top end notes on a glockenspiel, as we head towards our first night. Wednesday was a lot of fun. Mark, our director, asked us to go down town in Tobermory in character. What a laugh we had. People just didn’t know quite what to make of it all. Helen and Ed as Lucy and Julian strapped themselves to the trees across the road from the Co-op and shouted slogans against my character, Sir Alex. Annie, as Jean, went around and badgered lots of people into buying her newsletter, and even managed to get the entire Chocolate Shop to sing happy birthday to a wee boy.

Barrie, as John Angus, in full tartan regalia, nipped up the hill and put his washing out, which I think was very keeping in character. The special award for the day, though, goes to Sandy Brechin, not in his first character Aly the accordionist, but as a policeman. Sandy had a big adventure… In full police uniform he strolled around the town asking odd questions of people, nipped into shops to get a wee ice cream here and there, told people that they couldn’t build sandcastles on the beach as it was a site of specific scientific interest, and that they should repair to the rocky beach on the other side of the pier. Oh, and he also nipped into the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust to report that one of their whales was missing. So as the bold Sandy swayed along the road, high visibility tabard over one shoulder, ice cream in hand, he was surprised to see a police van appear in front of him. The gnarly finger of the local constabulary beckoned him over. They were not amused. Sandy was last seen rolling up the road in the van calmly licking a raspberry ice in the front seat.

We had the dress rehearsal tonight, with an invited audience of people who were involved in the building of our production centre at Druimfin. It went well, and we were all happy with the result. Some of the key props weren’t in place, but we got there in the end. It was lovely to have an audience in. We could actually dance with people! I think this run is going to be a whole lot of fun.

And now for the first night… Leg breakage all round.

Alasdair Satchel as the Laird with Mr McCrindle and Julian, providing backing vocals on the opening night

Monday 21 July 2008

Our first night’s been and gone. All went well. Thank goodness. We had a special preview on Thursday for the builders who worked on Mull Theatre’s new production centre, which was rather enjoyable. Some of them were a bit timid when it came to the interactive scene with the phone and they passed it around from person to person. Which was not ideal, as you shall see when – or if – you make it along to see the show. Only one person answering the phone at a time, please!

The actual first night itself went very well. We were all pleased. All the key props and lines were in place at the right time, so what more could you ask for? For me I now want to find out how I can pad my character out a little bit more, how can I fill him out to just the right side of pomposity. The best way to do this is to interact with people in the theatre environment. It’s a very subtle thing as you don’t want to go too far overboard so that the audience are turned off by your presence. You just have to get it so that they are curious about how odd you are, and want to know more. It’ll take time, but I’m sure I’ll get there. One of the more tricky things is maintaining the character in different circumstances. At the beginning of the show, we’re interacting and improvising outside with the public as they enter and then, when they’re in the space, we’re playing the script that Euan and Dave wrote. So you’ve got to play the character at the same level all the way through the performance, both inside and out, or else the audience will notice, and possibly assume that you’re another character, or a cruddy actor. (One of which may be true…) This is a problem that Helen and Ed, as Lucy and Julian the eco warriors, have been finding. Children seem to congregate around them outside, and really identify with their characters, but whilst inside, in the world of the scripted part of the play, the characters are really quite unlikeable. Both Helen and Ed are great actors and have the situation well in hand, though.

So it’s now time for the tour! Yippee!!!! Invergarry here we come!

As we’re tootling along the road we’re going to play a few travelling games to while away the hours. My personal favourite is “Dutch Car!” where you try to spot a Dutch car before the others in your vehicle. This is worth 5 points. Yellow cars are worth 2, Eddie Stobart lorries are worth 2. If you shout “Dutch car!” and you get it wrong, it’s not a Dutch car, your points go back to 0. Oh it’s mean, but I love it! We’ll also be playing the one-word-letter game from “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue”, where you take turns to provide one word in a letter between two people. That’s very silly indeed. Car registration plates also do a good turn, if you try to come up with phrases that start with the first letter of the last three letters of a car registration plate. For instance, YKN, might be Your Knotted Nose, Young Knight’s Nocturnes, or something more puerile and rude, as is often the case. So if you’ve got any ideas for games we might play on the road, please do send me an email and let me know. I’ll keep you up to date with how we get on as we progress along the highways and byways of Scotia.

Putting their best feet forward - can you tell who's who by their shoes?

Thursday 24 July 2008

Every day a new hall and a new audience. I rather like touring. So far we’ve taken in Invergarry Hall, Lochinver Hall and now the Macphail centre in Ullapool. Our journey on the first day took us from Tobermory in the morning (many thanks to Georgia, my girlfriend, for helping to clean my house at a ridiculous time of day!), to Fort William for a quick “sangdwidge” and various salads at the local supermarket, and then on to Invergarry. Ed got a sandwich that was about two foot long. It was incredible. Somehow he managed to eat it all, and not get it all down his front. A special award for food-based skill goes to he.

The show in Invergarry was a roaster. My goodness, it was so hot the sweat was lashing in to my eyes. Very good baking there. Helen Mackay (who plays Lucy) loves a good bit of home baking. She was coveting a chocolate marzipan bomb thing that they had there, and I managed to procure one for her at the end of the evening. On another note, I must say that their shortbread was excellent. I think we must have a shortbread award for the tour. Invergarry was certainly a very good opening gambit. People had come from miles around to see the show in Invergarry, I met a couple who had come from Broadford on Skye. Funnily enough, their daughter lives in Tobermory.

The next day featured a very long drive, from Loch Ness side to Lochinver. What stunning scenery. It really is a pleasure to tour around when it’s as lovely as this. Thankfully the weather has been superb. It was roasting yesterday, George and the two Brians got thoroughly basted in the van, while we cruised in air-conditioned splendour in the people carrier. It was great to see Suilven again, the sugar loaf hill near Lochinver. These are the haunts of my childhood holidays, and it does feel just like being a small boy again. Which is rather nice, as I was a fairly happy – if rotund – child. 130 folk came to see the show in Lochinver. They were crammed in to the gunnels. I hope they all managed to see the action. The road back to Ullapool from Lochinver was very pleasant. Ross & Cromarty has put up some really rather good signs about local geology at all the major viewpoints, which is of interest to me, as I do like a bit of geology now and again. Thanks to Mr Livingston, my old geography teacher for introducing me to the delights of lateral and terminal moraines, to say nothing of isostatic rebound.

The get-in (where we set up the hall with all that’s needed for the show) for Ullapool was easy enough, and left us with enough time to enjoy the afternoon in our own way. Alasdair H, Helen, Ed and I headed for the local pool to try to swim a bit, and mostly succeeded, despite the best intentions of a local group of playfully aquatic youths. The show went down well in Ullapool, with many people taking to the floor for the dancing. Which is ideal, as people really get in to the action of the piece.

I’m slowly finding new things with the laird, which is good. Every performance you do has to be very similar to the previous, so that every one knows what they’re doing, but you have to find ways to keep it fresh for yourself, so that you don’t get bored with it. It’s too early in the run to get bored with the play, but it’s really good to keep yourself active and interested in it all.

And now to bed. It’s 23.40pm and I’m utterly pooped. If it’s Friday tomorrow, it must be Carrbridge…

The Edinburgh taxidermy...

Saturday 26 July 2008

What fantastic weather to tour the Highlands. It’s been just stunning all week. Only as we head down the A9 to Carrbridge does the weather start to appear a wee bit hazy. It’s still bloomin’ warm, though.

Carrbridge is the ideal hall for Accidental Death of An Accordionist. It’s a nice size, and is suitably late 19th/early 20th century in its design and look. The more credible the venue, the more believable the show is, it seems to me. The company now have midge hats en masse to repel the repellent Highland midge. It’s quite a sight as a whole squad of people are to be seen lugging bits of scenery and propage across various car parks, decked out in anti-midge clothing. Remember that scene with the scientists and the plastic tunnel in ET? Well, we’ve made the theatrical equivalent.

Our accommodation in Carrbridge was fantastic. If ever you’re passing through, or even just visiting The Landmark Centre in Carrbridge itself, you must treat yourself to a night at Melon Patch Guest House. The proprietors were in domestic service across in America, and boy do they look after you. The best porridge I’ve had on tour so far – and we even saw two red squirrels prancing around on the trees outside the breakfast room, like tiny spaniel puppies in delirium.

Sunday 27 July 2008

From Carrbridge it was on to Birnam. Home of yon wood that Bill Wigglestick mentions in yon Scottish play. All that remains of the wood now is one or two giant oaks. So needless to say I was straight out there with my camera taking photos for the Macbeth education pack that I’m in the process of developing for Mull T’s next production. Birnam’s an odd place. It’s very nice, but it seems that all the shops there bear very little relation to anything you’d actually ever need in everyday life.

Birnam Arts Centre was an interesting show, as it’s not really the ideal space for performing a piece such as ours, but we managed to pull it off, thanks to a very enthusiastic audience (and one man in tartan troos that were way too short for his legs!). Birnam was the scene of a remarkable incident involving Mr Sandy B. Reekin (please look away now if you’re easily offended). After having emitted several noxious odours in our cramped, dark dressing room, Sandy decided to disperse the aroma by the application of a home-made flame thrower: there was a blast of light, followed by a hint of Lynx where once there had been ignoble gas, and then Mr B. Reekin’ was gone with a “Right lads, see youse upstairs.” Needless to say we were floored with the giggles.

In a bar in Birnam a very nice man bought us all a round of drinks, as he had enjoyed the show so much! That hasn’t happened to me in a long time. We were all delighted and very merry indeed.

Monday 28 July 2008

From the delights of Birnam to the splendour of our Georgian lodgings in the new town of Edinburgh. I’ve never before had a house with taxidermy. We have three very nice birds: a jay, a Lady Amhurst’s Pheasant and a tawny owl, who we’ve placed by the window, looking longingly out to the streets below.

Today we’re off out to Glenkinchie Distillery to meet up with Mark, our director, and have a wee re-rehearsal for the Fringe version of the production, and then we’ve got several hours to set up and prepare before we spend a week out there doing the show. I’m really looking forward to this one, as my pal Adrian reckons it’s the best distillery tour he’s been on. I believe they have a working model of the distillery that makes real whisky, which was originally displayed at the Great Exhibition in Crystal Palace a hundred and more odd years ago. Of course, I’ll have to sample the delights some time after the show has come down. I’m looking forward to that.

My fiddle - last night when I got in from the bar, Annie and I had a nice wee session, herself on pipes, me on fiddle. Great stuff.

Friday 1 August 2008

So here we are in Edinburgh, all settled in to our swanky Georgian apartment. The weather has been very clammy the last few days, by jingo it’s just been a bit sweaty. It’s got so hot that I’m sleeping above the covers on a nightly basis.

The show is getting into its flow at Glenkinchie Distillery. We’re playing in an old garage off to the side of the main distillery. Surprisingly it’s one of the sweatier venues that we’ve encountered. The dancing has been popular here, and we’ve often ended up with a bit of a scrum on the dance floor, which makes for good fun. Our venue also has the added thrill of a frog infestation. Which I quite like. Lovely little hoppy things, so they are.

One member of the cast, who shall remain nameless, has a pathological fear of all things raninidean, and so when she, sorry, they, were about to make an entrance from our one off-stage entrance, and the other cast member placed a little froggy on top of their hat, she (they – sorry Helen, nearly gave it away!) had to restrain their screams as hard as they could. Especially when it leaped off in to the darkness… It could have ended up anywhere. Poor wee frog.

When we get back to Edinburgh from the distillery, it’s more often than not quite late, what with the parking restrictions in this part of the world. So we’ve been retreating to the safety of the League Of Gentlemen series two of an evening. “Scoobee, has anybaden got any bodle of owangejoos?” is usually the cry. And so onwards to the Fringe.

A wee dram of 12-year-old Glenkinchie

Tuesday 5 August 2008

Our week at Glenkinchie ended very well, with lots of happy faces in the audience. I really enjoyed playing there, the dancing, particularly, seemed to be really popular. It was a really happy environment in which to perform. We were made very welcome by the staff, so much so that when we left at the end, each of us were given a bottle of 12-year-old Glenkinchie! So thank you so much!

Saturday night was a good laugh. Everyone was in the mood for hi-jinks after our week in East Lothian, and so we roister-doistered until the crack of dawn. Needless to say, Dawn wasn’t too happy about it… Sunday was our day off. Needless to say no one was up particularly early. So we lounged around in the flat watching Battlestar Galactica until the rain stopped. Which it didn’t, so we watched more.

The day was rounded off for Mr Hawthorne, Annie and myself with a bout of Scotch and Rye. Not the alcoholic type, but the Rikki Fulton type. It was just lovely to see Scotch and Rye again. For me it was New Year, round at my Gran’s with my cousins and family. It was a real treat to get to see it then, and now, too. Some of the sketches are remarkably un-PC, such as the alien called Kweeah, who Super Cop stops in the street, and some of them are just timeless, brilliant performances. ‘Late Call’ with the increasingly drunk vicar stands the test of time. “Lovely water. Hik, Baaaaarp” Fantastic. And so to the Fringe. We’re on at St Brides every day, except Sundays, at 10.45 in the evening. This means that by the time we get out the venue it’s 12.45 or 1-ish. Oh my goodness, this is going to take some getting used to. Last night we ended up going to bed about 4.00. And in our bodies it felt like just around midnight. So for the purposes of the Fringe I’m going to be working in Azerbaijani time. Our first house was a kick in the pants off being sold out, which is an awesome start. St Brides is an unusual space to play in the round theatre, but it kind of works. We’ll learn a lot from playing here, I think it’ll be quite different from the other venues we’ve played. With fond regards from Edinburgh, in the suburbs of Baku.

Writer Euan Martin (centre) and Mark Saunders (far right) being interviewed at the Fringe

Saturday 9 August 2008

The fringe. It’s a funny beast. After having a nearly full house on our first night, our second show was cancelled due to low audience figures. Not ideal, by any means, but that’s what happens. So a night off was had. In actual fact, I think we were all pretty glad of a night off. It was early to bed for me, and as I lay there listening to the rain, I was kept gently teetering on the verge of consciousness by the seagulls nesting in the chimney pot. The chimney seems to work like an ear trumpet, amplifying all that is said into it at the top. So I now have a certain fluency in seagull. I wasn’t aware that they made so many calls. Mostly long distance calls over very poor lines, judging by the volume. Last night’s theatrical offering at Dionysus’ font went down well. Our audience, around 30 of them, seemed to enjoy the show a lot, so you can’t ask for more than that. I do enjoy the dancing in the show. It’s rather ripping fun. It’s very odd in St Bride’s as our technical crew, Brian and George, are miles away from us way up at the top of the extendible seating, deep in the far darkness. You’re conscious that they’re there, but all you can see is gentle scrambling around several thousand feet above your head. I went to see Dogstar’s The Tailor of Inverness yesterday. It was really very good. Written and performed by Matthew Zajak, with Gavin Marwick on fiddle, it deals with Matthew’s father’s life during the 2nd world war, and Matthew’s quest to find out the various truths of his father’s travels. Although I liked it, I feel it will be even better when it goes out on tour in the Highlands next year and plays in various village halls and theatres around and about. It will seem more impressive in such a situation, and have even more of an impact than it does in a room at the Assembly Rooms in the Fringe. I think this is a show that people will be talking about for a long time to come. I found it very heartening to see a show dealing with our diverse population in this country, but more so a show that implicitly deals with consequence of actions, without shoving it down your throat. It’s your call on what you make of Mr Zajak senior at the end of the piece. But no matter what you’re guaranteed a good night out. Press coverage of the show is going well too. We had 3 Weeks in last night doing a wee interview with Euan, one of the writers, and Mark, our director, while we lugged our set around in the get-out, as we packed our materials away for the next show. Euan and Dave – Right Lines Productions have two shows on at the Fringe, Accidental Death of an Accordionist, and their musical with Jim Brice, Whisky Kisses. I noticed in the interview with them on this very site that it’s reckoned that they are the first Highland company to have two shows on at the Fringe at the same time. Sorry to be an egregious boor, but… back in 2005, my company Perhilion Theatre Co did both One Man Rant and Two Man Rumble at the same time. That is one fine way to loose weight, two of the sweatiest shows you can imagine, but back to back. On that lovely image, I leave you to your day.

Sandy Brechin takes the onion challenge

Monday 11 August 2008

It’s been a merry old week. Much roister-doistering has been had. As you can see from the photo above, Mr Brechin has been very silly yet again, and after tucking in to a whole lime, with skin intact (for a £1 bet), he decided to gobble up the best part of an onion. After that he quietly went through to the fridge and took a bite out of pretty much everything in there – including my nan bread, which I was going to have for my dinner the next night. He’s a very silly man. As he bit into a Tunnocks Tea Cake, including foil, he said, and I quote here, m’lud: “It’s like a pinball machine,” as the foil ran over his fillings. Oh jings. Saturday night’s audience was particularly lovely. There were lots of folk in and we had a very merry time. I think it’s longest strip the willow I’ve seen in quite some time. On Saturday I had the chance to go and see one of my all-time heroes, Nola Rae, performing her solo clown show, Exit Napoleon, Pursued by Rabbits. Mr Alasdair Hawthorne, our McCrindle in the play, came along with me, and though originally sceptical was a complete convert to the cause of Rae after a few moments. The basic idea is that a random cook stumbles upon Napoleon’s tent in the middle of a storm, and after trying to find something to eat, and mostly failing, tries on some of the Corsican’s clothes, and becomes overtaken, bit by bit, by an incredible sense of self importance and grandeur. By incorporating the audience into the performance in very simple ways, we totally enter into the folly of the piece, as the cook grows from small-time bossy-boots to globe-crushing dictator. It’s an incredible piece of work, and deeply moving. What is so particularly wonderful about it is that children are completely enthralled by the work, as well as adults. Nola is everything I aspire to as a performer – not to be a toadying wee sycophant, but, frankly, she’s as good as it gets. The show runs until the 15 August at Footsbarn’s Tent on the Calton Hill. If you can get along please do, as it’s a very, very special show. Last night George “Hieronymous” Fagan and my self went out to see Bert Jansch in concert at the Acoustic Music Centre. Thanks to my mates Jonathan and Euan, I’ve been a fan for quite a few years, so I was really looking forward to it. Sadly it wasn’t the best gig I’ve been to, and I’m sure not his best of late. But on the bright side, I can hang around backstage as we prepare to go on, while he plays, as we’re the act directly following on from him the following nights. So we’ll see. Here’s hoping John Renbourne later in the month will be better. George and I have a cunning plan on how to avoid late, late nights. Book early shows, and pay for them before you go along. So we’ll be seeing as much as we can about midday in the following weeks, including Involution, On the Waterfront, and hopefully a play about the late, great, Ian Dury (another of my heroes). I finally gave in today and went flyering for our show out on the Royal Mile (handing out leaflets to publicise the show). It’s a tough thing to do. There’s so many people out there, being deeply insincere and shouting and whoring their wares, in the most crass and gross of ways, so I try to be as sincere as possible when approaching people with a flyer. Most of the time it works, but, oh goodness, when it doesn’t you feel like a boob and a half. Hopefully this will have an impact on our audience figures. Fingers crossed.

Flight Lieutenant Algernon Smythe, pratting about in Armstrongs fancy dress parlor in the Grassmarket

Thursday 14 August 2008

To be honest, playing and selling a show at the Fringe is a hard thing to do. We’re trying lots of ploys, but it just takes time. We’ve been flyering for the show on the Royal Mile every day, but that’s really quite tricky, as every other show in the world’s largest arts festival is out there trying to sell themselves too. People can be very odd to you on that street. It’s a bit like hawking your wares… Perhaps I just need to dig out my old bloomers and see what happens – actually, no, with this moustache, that’s not a good idea. “Good afternoon officer. Me? Oh, well… erm… nothing… RUN!” What’s lovely about this time in Edinburgh is that although our audiences are small, they seem to be very happy. The best way to judge this is by the number of people who get up to dance, and we’ve had nights where everyone has been on the floor – so much so that it leaves me without a partner sometimes. So I just stand in the corner and throw shapes silently up to the technicians box, like a white-gloved dancer at a 90’s rave party, occasionally emitting a “heuch!” for good measure. After seeing Bert Jansch on stage last Sunday, I got a chance to meet him backstage a couple of times, and was really chuffed to enter in to a casual acquaintance with him. It was great to be backstage, changing and hear his sets. I wish I’d gone along on one of the other nights instead of the Sunday now. But, oh well. Mr Hawthorne, Ed, George and I all went to see On The Waterfront yesterday afternoon. Oh dear me. What a lot of self-important twaddle. I’ve been a huge fan of Steven Berkoff, the director, for many years, but oh goodness, was this dull. The poor man has been churning out the same thing year after year for over 30 years now. I think this, sadly, was the last step for me. His signature directing style just killed the piece totally. What a real shame. Surely you should be confident enough as a director with so many years of experience under your belt to try something new and different once in a while? George has been whiling away his afternoons in the company of the new Battlestar Galactica series. He’s getting very excited about it as he comes towards the end of the second series… Who are the final six cylons? I know, but I’m sure not going to tell him. Last night some of the boys got together around here to watch the film In Bruges by Martin McDonagh. What a movie, it really is something else. A few years ago, long before I joined the company, Mull Theatre did McDonagh’s Leenane trilogy. It’s such a good film, I really want to go back in time and see how Mull Theatre went about performing them on the island. If you get a chance to watch it, please do, but be warned, if you’re easily offended, perhaps you should give it a miss. Well, more late nights of revelry and mid-days of sore heads await us in the coming days, I’m sure.

Tuesday 19 August 2008

Our gobble rate of consuming other shows, in the flat, has been rather good of late. I think that between us we might very well have taken in a huge wodge of the festival, both the International and Fringe festivals. For me the highlight was the Steve Reich Evening at the Festival Theatre. It was amazing. I know I’m starting to sound toadying, again, but it really bowled me over. I’ve never seen dancers with such personality. Very often when you see a dancer move on stage they are just choreographed individuals, following the line of the choreographer, without any hint of their own personality. That can be really interesting, and I do love the regimented feel of such work, having recently been introduced to the work of Bob Fosse by Messers Hawthorne and Hunter. The choreographer, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, made her name working with the music of Steve Reich over 25 years ago, and this piece was a retrospective of her work with his music. It was simply awesome, both Mr Captain “Obadiah” Fagan and I were incredibly taken with the work. Saturday night was a great success at St Bride’s, we had 120 in the audience, and what fun we had with them. We enjoyed ourselves so much that we ended up having a wee ceilidh back at our palace until nearly 6 in the morning! Miss Annie Grace and my friend, the very talented Aly Macrae, provided the cornerstone of the ceilidh. What a talented rotter Aly is. A very fine fiddle player, remarkable songwriter, great actor and thoroughly lovely chap. What a rotter. Sunday took us out to visit Mark, our director’s house, outside Edinburgh. What a lovely situation he lives in. Most of the cast made it along and we consumed barbecued meats and Pims a-plenty, then went for a wee stroll along the beach. It was a lovely, lovely afternoon, and I can’t tell you how good it felt to see trees and fields again. I can feel the itch to get out of town soon. This afternoon sees us going to John Lewis’ window to advertise the show… I think we’re going to have some silly fun.

Over the sea to Easdale...

Tuesday 2 September 2008

The Fringe being well and truly over, and we find ourselves back on the road once more. Getting an audience at the Fringe wasn’t easy, and I think we should be very proud of the numbers that we pulled in. We ended up doing some very strange things to market the show, prime amongst which was our wee publicity slot in John Lewis’ store, down from Princes St. Whilst Sandy and Annie played away inside the window (not too loudly, though, as “people couldn’t hear themselves ordering carpet”) we, the cast, touted the show to passers-by, or more appropriately, those sheltering from the elements with us under the Lewis’s awning. A very strange experience indeed. Our venue was great, and made us feel so welcome. Special thanks to Faith, Josiah, John, Martin & Patrick for helping us along and entering into the spirit of things so fully. There’s even a teddy bear up on a ledge somewhere in St Brides that has a wee banner declaiming “Save The Trees!”. Sorry not to have been blogging much recently, but I’ve just been really busy getting things in to shape for our Macbeth education pack [technical difficulties with e-mail and the Editor’s holidays – ironically on Mull – have also slowed down the appearance of Alasdair’s missives. Our apologies. Ed].

The “Scottish Play” is our sister show, and out on the road as we speak. If you fancy a copy of the education pack do drop us a line at the theatre and we can sort you out with one for the princely sum of £3. Our first show after the fringe was at Strachur, near Dunoon, where I grew up. It was great to play so close to home, especially as it was my birthday! The cast very kindly got me a present or two of Maw Broon’s Cook Book (great tablet recipe in there) and a hip flask with a fine peaty Islay miniature. I was well chuffed! From Strachur we went on to Easdale, the slate island off of Seil, another slate island. What a trip! We had a lot of fun getting ourselves out there. Everything had to be transported out to the island on a dinghy. So two trips took the set and cast across. What a smashing wee island it is. You can easily walk around it in half an hour. The audience was just brilliant, we had a lot of hooting and guffawing. Just what you want. Then it was on to Carradale, down on the Mull of Kintyre. A very sweaty show ensued, with a slippy dancefloor to boot, but we survived it. It was an eventful night, and we all really enjoyed the slow, long, winding drive back up the road to the Craignish Village Hall at Ardfern the next day. Honest.

Our accommodation in Ardfern was astonishing, something truly special – we were booked in to a massive 15th century castle! It had a games room, massive trampoline in the grounds, several kitchens and lounges at our disposal, and lovely big bed rooms with huge baths. My bath was so big I almost cooked myself in it.

The show went well, but we were all ganting to get back to the accommodation to start our weekend and play around in the castle. Which we did till around three in the morning. At which point I decided to go off to bed. Only to find that there was a bat in my room, which wouldn’t go out, no matter how much I tried to reason with it. So Ed, Barrie and myself then tried to make a corridor of towels to guide it out of the window. Which didn’t work even remotely. In the end I shared a room with Helen Mackay, who had a twin room near by. So thank you Helen, again! And then it was back to Tobermory for me, and a weekend with my girlfriend. I finally feel like I’ve had a day or two off, as it was so good to get back to Tob. Tonight finds us in Benderloch, near Oban (where most of the cast spent the weekend), so I type this in my B&B in Oban town. Next stop Mull for three nights! Bunessan and Tobermory. I can’t wait to get back. Avanti!

Before the odyssey began - rehearsing the show at Druimfin

Thursday 11 September 2008

We had a return trip to Mull last week. It was absolutely brilliant to be back on the island, preforming in Bunessan and at Druimfin, our new space outside of Tobermory. I got to go home and do my washing, eat my own food, and sit on my own couch and sleep in my own bed. How fantastic!

The shows in Tobermory went very well, and we were all pleased with the audience response. It was, in actual fact, a bit strange to come back to where we had rehearsed the show. The show has grown since we first played Druimfin. We’ve all fleshed out our characters a lot more, and have found a lot of things to play with, since our first days at Druimfin.

From Tobermory we headed down to Cove, via the Fishnish – Lochaline ferry, where many of us took up the opportunity to consume snacks at the Fishnish-side café. You cannae beat a square sausage and tattie scone roll of a morning, I say. The road down to Cove was incredibly windy, and we were all very glad when we arrived at the hall. Cove is a fine venue, and the audience responded brilliantly to the show. I even met (sadly in character at the time, so I couldn’t interact with her as a normal person) a lady who had a necklace made of Scottish silver and gold, with a small piece of the Stone of Destiny in it! From what I can gather her father had been a stonemason with Caskie’s lot, who abducted the stone some decades ago. She wouldn’t tell me if the one in Edinburgh Castle is the real one or not… I do like a good mystery.

From Cove we had a weekend off, so while the cast and crew headed home to Glasgow and beyond, Sandy B, George ‘Bongo’ Fagan and I stayed over in Rosneath in a very fancy B&B, and then got a run from Sandy to the wee ferry that connects with the Calmac in the morning, to then eventually get across to Dunoon, where we were going to get back to stay with our families. Two days off ensued, more or less, and now I find myself in a B&B in Aberdeenshire, Old Deer, to precise, scribbling a blog, while the Gorillaz new album squeaks away on my speakers. I think it’s the best Gorillaz album yet. It’s well worth a listen if you like something a little bit on the different side. Tonight we play New Deer, and I’ve yet to figure out where and when I can get something to eat before the show. Fingers crossed that I find something. A whole day sat in the people carrier does tend to grow a hunger…

Stag Head

Wednesday 17 September 2008

I’ve never really been to Aberdeenshire before. As a child we used to take holidays in Peterhead, at my Uncle Robert’s, but I can’t say I recall too much about the scenery around the town at all. What a lovely, lovely county it is. It’s very green and agrarian. The last few days have seen us in various towns and villages, plying our merry trade of nonsense.

In Keith, we stayed in one of the finest B&B’s I’ve ever seen, which was truly awesome. The Loft in Keith is a very good space, too, and our show fitted in there just fine. It’s an initiative run for young people, along with Craighurst’s restaurant, where young people who may not have many options in life are given training in catering and service work. We ate like kings in Craighurst, and if ever you get a chance to go there, I do recommend it very strongly! All is well now that we’ve had a couple of days off in Inverness, after our jaunt through Moray, which we’ll be returning to later in the week. I’ve enjoyed being in Inverness, and I think we’ve all sated some capitalist urges that were brewing for a long time. Hootananny’s, the folk pub/Thai restaurant in Inverness has had a roaring trade from us these last few days, and now I think I’ll run off to get myself some good, clean, spicy food to see if I can sweat this cold I’ve been suffering out of my system.

© Alasdair Satchel, 2008

Links

• Mull Theatre
• Right Lines

MARCUS J WILSON reports on three Highlands and Islands shows at the 2008 Edinburgh Fringe Festival – Dogstar Theatre’s The Tailor of Inverness, The Sorren Maclean Band, and Mull Theatre’s production of Right Lines’ The Accidental Death of an Accordionist.

he Accidential Death of an Accordionist (photo - Euan Martin)

TEN YEARS ago a show came to the Edinburgh Fringe called Bingo. Created in the Netherlands, it featured a band of seedy charlatans who tried to distract the audience with offers of food, cheap watches, back rubs and quickie divorces. The audience, meanwhile, was more concerned with keeping up with a genuine game of bingo and a weird dramatic tension developed as the show went on.

I’m reminded of this situationist joke when a willing audience leaps up from the cabaret-style tables to join in a ceilidh in The Accidental Death of an Accordionist. A couple of dances in and there are dodgy goings on in the Glengirnie Hall, meaning the audience really can’t decide whether to keep on with the Strip the Willow or settle back into its conventional role of a passive audience.

I can’t think of a play that has used the ceilidh format so successfully since John McGrath’s The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil – although the National Theatre of Scotland’s Gobbo had something of the same free-form feel. The audience gets the sensation of being a true part of a village hall event, encouraged by the second-rate raffle prizes and the caricatured Highland locals.

The production – a collaboration between Right Lines and Mull Theatre that has been proving a hit since 2001 – establishes a feelgood vibe from the start, making half the fun the audience themselves.

Despite my evoking the name of the late McGrath, there is little in the script by Euan Martin and Dave Smith that could be considered political. Yes, there’s some local tension between the laird with his time-share plan and the local eco-activists with their alternative ideas, but at heart, this is a daft murder mystery that would fall apart under any serious analysis. Indeed, it’s the daftness that is part of the charm, making it feel like you’ve fallen into a cartoon ceilidh in which everything is a little more heightened than in real life.

The result, in Mark Saunders’ production, is a joyful, silly and funny evening fuelled by a ceilidh-comedy-whodunit hybrid (plus shadow puppets) quite unlike anything you’ve experienced before.

© Mark Fisher, 2008

Links

• Mull Theatre
• Right Lines Theatre
• Mark Fisher’s Scottish Theatre Blog

Associated Page

• Accidental blog
• Euan Martin interview

Swindle and Death (photo - Douglas Robertson)

WOULD IT be possible for a theatre company to scratch a living from touring the church halls and community centres of the Highlands and Islands without ever coming under the radar of the press or the Scottish Arts Council? Would it be able to stay invisible in this way for 300 years?

Even playwright Peter Arnott, who dreamed up the idea of such a company for this Mull Theatre production, would admit it is unlikely. But allowing for satirical exaggeration, he’s not so wide of the mark. If it’s true that the nation’s arts are controlled by a metropolitan elite, it’s lovely to imagine that a band of itinerant players led by actor-managers Brian Swindle and Eric Death have survived since 1707 entirely without their help.

What happens next in Swindle and Death is more of a problem. Ever since Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream, dramatists have been tempted to write plays within plays, so running the risk of appearing self-regarding and indulgent. Unless the send-up is spot on, it’s too easy to fall into cliché.

This is what’s wrong with the bad acting and creaky historical verse dramas that characterise the Swindle and Death repertoire. It has two unfortunate effects. The first is that unless your sense of humour never developed beyond Peter Glaze’s routines on Crackerjack, it isn’t funny. The second is we end up thinking the Scottish Arts Council would be absolutely right to ignore such a second-rate outfit, which undermines Arnott’s own argument about the artist being superior to the bureaucrat.

This is a shame because Arnott’s debate is worth a public airing. He contends that the values of administrators, with their love of health-and-safety regulations and commitment to social policy, are shaping not just the educational outreach programmes but the very nature of the work that gets staged. After a tedious first half, the play suddenly gets interesting (and momentarily funny) when an arts council mole rewrites a play about Mary Queen of Scots in accordance with gender equality guidelines.

The moment does not last, however, and the play is soon verging off into a daft plot about actors being genuinely murdered in classic theatrical death scenes, only to rise from the dead. It’s another example of a play that never stays in the real world long enough for its satirical argument to hit home.

© Mark Fisher, 2008

Links

• Mull Theatre
• Mark Fisher’s Scottish Theatre Blog

Brightwater presented by Mull Theatre.

ARTS IN Motion’s The Box It Came In (Merkinch Community Centre) is the follow up to their very successful “The Perfect Spot”. Evanton-based creative production company Arts in Motion have been experimenting with projection, performance and animation since the 1990’s.

Part of the same company and formerly known as Clown Jewels, Cartoon Theatre have developed several shows for children including “The Perfect Spot”, “The Comic” and “The Other Side”. “The Box It Came In” combines live performance with computer animation and front projection in an enjoyable show for a young audience.

Inventive staging brings 2D and 3D realities merging in real time as actor Brian Smith and audience react to the story and imagery as it unfolds. With his teddy bear for company the lead character travels from his living room to planet Zet at the edge of the universe. Audience participation is an important aspect of the show through drawing and active participation in repairing the space ship!

The style of performance owes much to slapstick comedy, the imaginative world of animation and panto. This combination and a largely projected set, bright colours and simplified design makes the show easy for its target audience to relate to. It’s a show that would fit easily into community halls and a good introduction for kids to a live theatre experience.

Brian Smith’s energetic solo performance, aided by silent sidekick Ted and inventive staging, kept the audience visually entertained throughout. A great accompaniment to touring such a show would be creative exploration of drawing and basic animation techniques in relation to performances in schools.

Expanding the lone experience of the computer generation into something larger through the collective experience of live theatre is extremely clever. This is an aspect of Cartoon Theatre that could be developed further in relation to a range of age groups in the future.

GLASGOW-based Fish & Game’s Otter Pie (Craigmonie Centre, Drumnadrochit) raised important questions about Scottish identity and the pursuit of happiness in the 21st century but failed to deliver a full and coherent exploration of its theme.

The show was performed and devised by Eilidh MacAskill, Robert Walton, Nic Green, Murray Wason and Jodie Wilkinson. Although the cast are skilled and energetic what they deliver is a convoluted mix of theatre, dance, comedy and the artifice of production, playing both themselves and fictional characters.

The ingredients for meaningful exploration, humour and irony are all there, but the writing is episodic, combining too many obtuse references for an audience to really grasp the mettle of the argument. The performance moves between characters and storyline from Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s classic Scottish novel ‘Sunset Song’, a range of other literary references and influences including Bill Bryson, Billy Collins, Carol Craig, Martin Seligman and Bill Duncan, and the personalities and interactions of the cast and director.

Set on a grid of tartan and beginning with a series of stylised dance movements to LA funk, the meaning of which only becomes clear at the end when the sequence is repeated, the staging and execution contains many clever cultural references.

At one point the story of ‘Sunset Song’ is choreographed to ceilidh dance movements but this is only one in a series of different plays on the original text. The way in which Scottish popular culture clings to the past, evoking a nostalgic view of a way of life all but extinguished is actively questioned by the play but there is more room for critical development.

If the play does offer a conclusion then it is the need to live for the here and now and for individuality without the selfishness of the “me generation” to define the nation and contextualise the past.

As the cast navigates its way through these themes beneath the deadly threat of falling meteorites the pie becomes more like a stew. Editing and revising would make a much stronger work. Moments of clarity, irony and real poignancy are never really allowed to develop and link to a cohesive performance or conclusion.

I hope that this production will evolve into a more coherent work in future incarnations. As a piece of experimental theatre it shows great promise but it is at this stage only a beginning rather than a finished work. Having said that, the issues it raises are vital ones and the production actively demonstrates that live performance is a great forum for visualisation and debate. How we define ourselves now will determine how we are seen in 100 years, if we are in fact seen at all.

MULL Theatre’s Brightwater (Inverness High School) also engaged with the life and work of a Scottish writer. Set on Eilean Ban near Kyleakin, “Brightwater” dramatises the life of Gavin Maxwell “naturalist, explorer, social renegade, basking shark hunter, racing driver, wartime secret agent, poet and one of the most popular authors of wildlife books this century”. The play is essentially a dialogue between Maxwell and his younger self with evocative sound and music design by Martin Low and lighting design by Mick Andrews setting the scene for earlier episodes as the author reflects upon his life.

Richard Addison as the older Maxwell and Richard Conlon as the younger are both excellent. However, choosing to explore the character of Maxwell in this way felt unexpectedly limiting. In devising a theatrical portrait, playwright Jon Pope reveals Maxwell’s human failings in a series of reminiscences of a life which centre entirely on the self.

Though as an audience we are left in no doubt as to the complexity and sometimes contradictory nature of Maxwell’s personality, I actually left wanting to know more about characters peripheral to the performance, namely poet Kathleen Raine and explorer Wilfred Thesiger.

I did not feel sympathy, empathy or interest in Maxwell himself as I left the theatre. His relationships and his influence on others, neither of which are really dealt with by the play, caused the most thought or speculation post-performance.

Although the Maxwell legend is brought down to focus on one multifaceted human being there are larger issues here begging to be explored. The play touches on many fascinating themes which would make for a far more compelling play in two acts than Maxwell engaging in dialogue with his younger self.

The influence of Maxwell and his legacy, our contentious relationship to the landscape of the Highlands and Islands, man and the nature of conservation, the freedom of the individual among the mass of humanity and the culture of “opting out” for those of independent means which still persists in the Highlands today are all themes worthy of greater exploration.

The way in which Maxwell’s ‘Avalon’, his West Highland idyll, disintegrates by being popularised is perhaps one of the most interesting facets of his story. Creating a sanctuary from the rest of humanity, the need for solitude and unconditional love are also central to this character and could have been developed further.

Like Maxwell the playwright seems to have banished the rest of humankind from his stage. As a result the stage narrows and it is hard to feel anything for the central character, which I suspect was not the author’s intention. Maxwell travelled widely and however destructive he did have relationships. He stepped in and out of society which was his privilege.

His love of animals manifested itself primarily in their captivity and although Maxwell has come to represent conservation, particularly of the otter, there is something about his character presented here that lacks integrity or sympathy. Loving something to the point where you destroy it and rating your own freedom above all others makes you neither a noble environmentalist nor a sensitive soul but a sad and spoilt eccentric.

THURSO-based Grey Coast Theatre Company presented a “script in hand” live reading of founder and Artistic Director George Gunn’s latest work about the Highland Clearances, Taigh Na Mara (Houses of the Sea) (Merkinch Community Centre), on the final evening of the festival.

Caithness actors Drew Macleod, Heather Calder-MacPhee, Ian MacDonald, Helen MacKay and Anthony Carberry presented the journey of preacher Norman MacLeod and his followers from Assynt to Ullapool, Pictou Nova Scotia, St Anne’s Cape Breton, Adelaide, Melbourne and Waipu New Zealand. (I did wonder about staging and design as all these various locations unfolded through stage direction during the reading.)

Though the subject matter is topical and the premise for a play is fascinating there are scenes here which neither develop character nor further the action and would benefit from cutting, especially during the less taut second half. Scenes with outlaws and miners in Australia didn’t really seem to serve a purpose.

What begins as a semi-historical drama becomes infused with symbolism in the second half and an attempt to reinterpret the subject in terms of the universality of human experience. The refugee status of Highlanders cleared from their land is somewhat clumsily fused with references to modern war, conquest and injustice.

“The Highland capacity for survival” is a human capacity for survival. Whilst this sentiment is perfectly valid it is lacking in subtlety much like the oft referred to moon imagery throughout the play.

Though there are some strong and lyrical moments in the play, I found the central character of Norman Macleod lacking in depth, framed by his preaching, fanaticism and dwarfed by the scope of his epic journey.

The characters of his wife Mary and mistress Mhairi are interestingly explored in more detail. This is a tale well worth telling, but I found the description that “with a company of community actors themselves from the Highlands only Grey Coast Theatre Company is qualified to tell this story” in the Festival’s listings strangely parochial.

If writing is powerful and well crafted whether the cast comes from the Highlands or not isn’t really relevant. The desire for cultural distinction and regional character sits uneasily with the universal elements of the play. Gunn’s scene that exchanges sexes and extinguishes the past therefore sits confusingly in a play of two halves.

The Highland Clearances are still an emotive issue today and the play relies heavily on that sentiment of injustice. Though I have no doubt that art can transform our understanding of history and be part of vital re-examination of individual and collective identity, I would question whether this play in its current form succeeds in doing so.

That said I very much enjoyed seeing a play being read in this way rather than presented as a finely finished performance. It has been wonderful as a viewer throughout the festival to engage with drama at all stages of conception, development and performance.

© Georgina Coburn, 2007

Links

• Dràma Na h-Alba

Cyprus (photo - Douglas Robertson).

JUST WHEN you thought the stage thriller was dead, here comes playwright Peter Arnott and Mull Theatre to prove if not that it has a robust future, at least that it has yet to breath its last.

Here, just as Agatha Christie would have recognised it, we have a remote country house, many a glass of whisky and even a handgun to up the tension for the denouement. There are so many secrets, lies and twists upon twists that to give an accurate run-down of the plot would require the double-dealing skill of an MI5 agent.

But, tired though these conventions are, Arnott sees them as an appropriate Trojan horse to carry his analysis of a world order corrupted by the power games of the establishment. The roots of today’s global unrest, he implicitly suggests, snake their way back to a time when country-house thrillers were all the rage.

In this genteel sitting room of a mansion near Dervaig on the Isle of Mull, the playwright releases forces that connect 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and al-Qaida. The result is a dense, wordy drama, directed by Arnott himself, that works despite itself.

Unlike the form it adopts, its politics are radical; unlike much radical theatre, it is not above portraying the human costs of the politics it describes. Woven into his vision of the realpolitik of spooks and Whitehall apparatchiks is a sad domestic tragedy about the personal damage caused by a life keeping state secrets and selling your principles to the highest bidder.

Arnott’s theme is – to use the language of the security services – to do with blowback, the phenomenon of western-funded insurgents biting the hand that fed them when circumstances change.

Kern Falconer’s Brian Traquair and Mark McDonnell’s Mike Griffen are former British agents with a history of interference in the Middle East. When they show up unexpectedly in Traquair’s house, where his 36-year-old daughter, Alison (Mary Wells) also happens to be, their tangled history of meddling with uncontrollable political forces slowly comes to light.

The deceit and double deceit make it impossible to work out who the good guys are – the playwright’s point presumably being that there can be no good guys in such a corrupt, callous and mercenary system.

The script could do with pruning, but it’s gripping, relevant stuff. Any melodramatic tendencies are countered by three finely understated performances, giving an old-fashioned drama the fearful flavour of today’s world in crisis.

(Cyprus’s remaing dates include Glen Urquart Hall, Drumnadrochit, 19 June; Plockton Hall, 20 June: Aultbea Hall, 21 June; Lochinver Hall, 22 June; Lyth Arts Centre, 23 June; Strathpeffer Pavilion, 26 June; Birnam Arts Centre, 27 June).

© Mark Fisher, 2007

Links

• Mull Theatre

MULL THEATRE are celebrating their final season in the cramped confines of Dervaig, and looking forward to an even more expansive future in their new home.

Mission Statement

MULL THEATRE is one of Scotland’s foremost touring theatre companies. Core-funded by the Scottish Arts Council since 2001, it makes a significant contribution to the cultural life of its own island community and throughout Argyll & Bute as well as to the overall provision of theatre activity within Scotland.

Its aim is to increase access to and participation in live theatre, both within its island community and beyond, and to create an environment which fosters creativity in the performing arts.

Since it opened, Mull Little Theatre has produced about 150 plays and seen well over 3,000 performances. Nearly 120,000 people have attended live theatre performances in this tiny cowshed in a remote village on an offshore island.

The company’s Artistic Director is Alasdair McCrone, who first came to Mull Theatre as an actor for the 1987 season and returned as full-time director in 1995.

Then he was the sole employee working with a volunteer administrator and a supportive board of directors. Now there is a core staff team of Lesley Hastie (Administrator), Sheena Miller (Marketing), Tony Cox (Associate Director – mainly working on the new building), Juliet Knight (Development – a lot of fundraising), and the company is soon to take on an Education Outreach officer.

Its creative team is a mix of regulars and newcomers. Most of the actors and stage management come from all around Scotland and beyond, although some have been company members on and off for many years – Alan Steele, Robert Paterson, Fletcher Mathers, Fiona Colliss, Beth Marshall, Mick Andrew, etc, with many others contributing to the larger touring shows.

In Music and Design the same team have worked on many projects over the last few years: Alicia Hendrick (designer), Martin Low (music and sound design), Robin Peoples (designer and builder) and Alan Melvin (builder and scenic artist) have been responsible for most of the company’s productions.

For many years the mainstay of the company has been its touring work. Mull Theatre tours extensively throughout the country, often to areas of low population where there is little access to live theatre, and it also contributes to the programming of major theatres with seasons at venues such as Dundee Rep, Perth Theatre, the Byre, the Royal Lyceum, the Tron and the Citizens Theatre.

It has recently completed a London West End run (December 2005), in association with the Ambassador Theatre Group, of a new play commissioned by the company.

Recent productions include: CYPRUS by Peter Arnott; KATIE MORAG by Mairi Hedderwick; THE LONESOME WEST by Martin McDonagh; JEKYLL & HYDE by R.L. Stevenson; THE DESIGNATED MOURNER by Wallace Shawn’ COPENHAGEN by Michael Frayn; KIDNAPPED by R.L. Stevenson.

Mull Theatre aims to provide an environment of creativity and exploration in the arts. It supports education and community theatre programmes, new writing initiatives, creative apprenticeships and a diverse range of opportunities for individuals and groups to release their creative potential.

The company regularly commissions new work from some of Scotland’s leading dramatists. It also runs a playwrights’ workshop, a further-education drama course in association with Argyll College, and has a close involvement with schools and community groups.

The company has been in existence since 1966, operating from the tiny Mull Little Theatre in the village of Dervaig on the Isle of Mull. Here the company runs a challenging and diverse repertory season from May to September every year.

However, the current year, 2006, is the final season in Dervaig, as the lease on the original theatre building ends in December. Fortunately, that’s not the end of the story, since the company has secured SAC Lottery, European and Local Enterprise Company funding to create a new production centre at Druimfin, just outside Tobermory.

This will facilitate the creation of touring shows and the development of other work by Mull Theatre and will offer facilities and support to other companies.
 
The new home for Mull Theatre

Throughout 2006 and into 2007, Mull Theatre will build its new home just outside Tobermory. The new facility will be at Druimfin, which lies within Aros Park, a former country estate which is now a much loved and easily accessible public park owned and run by the Forestry Commission.

This soon to be built Production Centre will allow Mull Theatre to create an exciting model for theatre practice in the Highlands. We hope this will be a hub of creative opportunity where work will be produced, new shows tried out, great projects conceived, skills acquired and nurtured, creativity encouraged, ideas developed, collaborations fostered and careers launched.

Current Production Or Work-In-Progress

2006 Mull Theatre Productions:

‘Art’ – The internationally successful comedy makes its debut in the Scottish Highlands and Islands. Mull Theatre’s production of this comic, sometimes riotous, study of friendship has shades of ‘Frasier’ and ‘Men Behaving Badly!’ (Touring Scotland in September/October)

‘Macbeth’ – Marvel at how it’s possible to fit nine murders, numerous banquets and all kinds of magical deeds on to a stage measuring 14 by 7 feet! Dynamic, inventive, highly imaginative and theatrical, this production is an original interpretation of Shakespeare’s dark, political thriller.

‘Egg’ – The story of Red, whose mission is to care for and educate an egg bound for Earth in a spaceship. But things don’t always go to plan! This is a second season for our wonderful clown show for all ages.
(Touring Scotland in September/October)

‘Old Herbaceous’ – This one-man show was a much-loved part of Mull Little Theatre’s summer seasons in 1984 and 1986, and it returned for the final year at the old theatre. As gardener Bert potters around his plant pots and gardening tools, he relates tales of his life as a gardener, completely drawing us in to his special world.

Coming up…

‘In the Wake of Bright Water’, by Jon Pope, based on the writings of Gavin Maxwell – a dramatic portrait of one of the most extraordinary Scots of recent times: social renegade, basking shark hunter, racing driver, wartime secret agent, poet – as well as naturalist and explorer.

‘Swindle and Death’ by Peter Arnott – a pair of shabby, yet grandiose actors touring popular melodrama around Scotland in the twilight of the Edwardian age. Like the seasons, they appear every year at the same time. In 1913, however, they leave something more than the memory of a performance behind…
 
Fantasy Theatre – Your Dream Project?

Doing the work we currently do in tiny Mull Little Theatre (where you can’t swing a mouse let alone a cat) in a venue where animal acrobatics are possible.

Golden Moment?

There have been so many over the last few years that it’s hard to pick out one:

Taking our shows to venues which very few if any other companies get to – Colonsay, Coll, Benderloch, Campbeltown, etc, etc.

Taking the same show into local village halls that has been seen at all the biggest theatres in the country – e.g. our production of ‘Copenhagen’ which played in only three venues – Mull Little Theatre, the Glasgow Citizens and Easdale Island Village Hall.

Taking ‘Cyprus’, a play we’d commissioned, to the West End.

Finally knowing that the new production centre had got the funding go-ahead.

Assembling and working with a fantastic creative team who have collaborated on many shows over the last few years.
 

And Not So Golden Moment…

It was the opening night of Macbeth on July 10th this year, and it had been a very short production week due to the number of shows at the Little Theatre. The set was bigger than normal, in that it extended out through to the backstage area and out into the foyer.

The last bits were being hammered together outside as it approached time for the doors to open – when the rain started. ‘Rain’ is too timid a word for what happened; it was more of a monsoon, the kind of summer downpour that comes at you from all angles and soaks through clothing in 10 seconds flat.

The most leaky bits of the theatre were no match for this and within seconds the ladies’ loo was flooded and water ran in torrents between the dressing room and backstage area.

Dripping audience members rushed up under inadequate umbrellas only to be sent back to far-away parking spaces because the set building was now taking up the entire foyer area.

Finally the doors opened and everybody squelched and dripped into the theatre, perfectly suited for the pre-show sound effects of a lightning storm!

Highland Theatre – Is There Such A Thing, And If So, What Is It?

Mull Theatre was one of the founding members of the Highland Theatre forum nearly 10 years ago. At that time we were all united by lack of funding and breadth of aspiration.

Thankfully the funding aspect has become a bit less of an issue for Mull Theatre, and I know that many of the members of HITN get project funding and support from the Highland Producers Fund.

The aspirations of the companies remain broad, and encompass many disciplines and experiences. I think it’s dangerous to attempt to align the many and varied companies in the region to a particular type or approach.

Nevertheless what clearly unites the practitioners is their love of, investment in and ambition for their own artform in the place they come from or have made their home.

© Alasdair McCrone, 2006

Links

• Mull Theatre

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

Beth Marshall and Sandy Neilson in Cyprus.

IT IS A TRIBUTE to the vitality of Scottish theatre in general, and the Mull Theatre company in particular, that Peter Arnott’s timely play about a spymaster in retirement should have been chosen to launch this new theatre space carved out of the old Whitehall Theatre.

Studio 1 has been in operation for over a year, but the 100-seat Studio 2 is brand new, one of those versatile rectangular spaces in which the seating layout can be changed to suit the needs of the play.

Cyprus proved very much an “in your face” affair – for both audience and players – because of the physical limitations of the space. Not that this worries the Mull Theatre players, who are accustomed to working under such restraints, and the intimacy added to the play’s impact.

Directed by Arnott, Cyprus is set on Mull where Brian Traquair, a retired intelligence official, played with weary charm and great authority by Sandy Neilson, is living with his dogs. His daughter Alison (an impressive Beth Marshall), an impassioned, edgy and ultimately quite chillingly single minded woman, has come to visit.

The play is more than just an accomplished thriller.

Her annoyance is partly, we later discover, caused by the fact that Griffen once seduced her, but also because she knows he is not what he seems. But there is more going on than that. Arnott has several surprises to deliver, which it would be a pity to spoil, and, after a rather talky first act, he duly does so most effectively.

The play is, however, more than just an accomplished thriller. It is about how our security services have been corrupted by the way politicians exploit what spies do, about how events are, as one of the characters says, timed to coincide with the television news bulletins, how their work has become part of the world of political spin, how the days of honest men like Robert Bruce Lockhart or Colonel Bailey are over. The spectre of David Kelly also looms over the evening.

Traquair and Griffen have been involved in many secret wars, notably in Oman and Afghanistan, but it is the events in Iraq on which Arnott focuses, using the war there to show how these honourable, if duplicitous men, have been corrupted. They no longer serve just the Crown, or their masters in government, but all sorts of other outside interests.

Has Griffen come to kill Traquair? Is Traquair really retired? Was their meeting in Whitehall an accident? Was it planned? What does Traquair’s computer conceal? Why does Alison throw herself at her one time seducer, whom she professes to dislike? And why Cyprus?

Arnott’s title is more than just a fanciful link between Mull and the Mediterranean island. Cyprus, where British spies have long plotted, is also home to a massive British base and “listening post” at Akrotiri from which all kinds of activities directed at the Middle East are initiated.

The chances of the people down the road – Tony and Cherie – popping in for an evening at their neighbourhood theatre are probably slight, but if they did it might be an illuminating, if uncomfortable experience for one or both.

William Russell is the former London editor of the Glasgow Herald, and is Chair of the Critics Circle Awards

© William Russell, 2005

Links

• Mull Theatre website
• Trafalgar Studios website

Katie Morag and Princess. Photo: Douglas Robertson.

YOU’D EXPECT a children’s show produced by the bijou Mull Theatre to be a hand-knitted alternative to the Balamory juggernaut that is currently ploughing its way through the UK’s biggest theatres. Indeed, the tour of ‘Katie Morag’ – the first ever stage adaptation of Mairi Hedderwick’s island stories – is squeezing in to some of Scotland’s smallest venues, from a primary school in Kyle to a village hall in Arisaig.

But the interesting thing about catching it on its week-long run at Glasgow’s Citizens’ Theatre is to see how it has all the makings of a junior blockbuster just as popular as its TV spin-off rival.

Written by Lisa Grindall with songs co-written by director Gordon Dougall, the show animates the life of the island of Struay – closely modelled on the real life Coll – by means of a treasure trail pursued by young Katie Morag and her newly discovered Florida cousins, Dude and Princess. Their race for buried gold takes them from the post office and shop to Grannie Islands’ cottage – home to Eriskay, the horse – Mrs Bayview’s pristine garden and a castle haunted by mischievous cats.

In the process, the brattish Americans discover that rural life is not as boring as they’d supposed and Katie Morag learns not to judge her friends by their appearances.

… with jolly songs – cleverly switching between Broadway and Highland influences – and lots of joining in, it’s a happy, mainstream experience.

There’s a bit of a schism between the sophistication of the cousins and the innocence of the young audience at which the show is aimed, but with jolly songs – cleverly switching between Broadway and Highland influences – and lots of joining in, it’s a happy, mainstream experience. A shrewd commercial manager would do well to polish it up for a bigger scale tour.

Katie Morag tours in Highland venues until late October.

© Mark Fisher, 2005

Related Link

• Mull Theatre website
  

EILEEN BELL investigates Mull Theatre Company’s search for a new home, and looks ahead to their 2005 season
 

THEATRE IN the Highlands and Islands – historically speaking – hasn’t exactly taken centre stage.  Don’t get me wrong; when it comes to entertainment, we’ve got it.  Ceilidhs, shindigs and hootenannies, weddings, funerals, piping recitals, and, yes, the eagerly anticipated annual Mod all provide plenty of valid excuses to have a good time.

We’re a hotbed of cultural activity, smouldering over the misty hills.  But when it comes to having a good drama or comedy acted out for a discriminating audience – well, let’s be candid.  One would look first to the big smoke and its hordes, the pulsating network of streets and cars and bustling activity and class division and its all-important insight into ‘Culture’.

But the times they are a-changing.  Artistically, Scotland is thriving, with funding available for just about anyone with talent.  Amongst the true success stories of our funded enterprises sits Mull Theatre, a professional theatre company intent on bringing productions to our remotest corners.

While on a media tour of Argyll organised by HI~Arts and the Channel 4 Ideas Factory in November, I had the opportunity to see Mull Theatre in their final performance of Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Jekyll & Hyde’, which had toured Scotland before coming back home to round things off in Tobermory. 

It was quite an enlightening experience, all in all.  The set was ingeniously constructed, given the size restriction of most of the venues it was to fit into.  The acting and the direction were fantastic, and the innovative reworking of the script was delightful; two actors were used to play the protagonist’s two sides, and this made the story much easier to follow and more fun to watch.

To see a play performed with talent and an experienced flair is a rare treat.  To see such a thing in Tobermory was… surprising.  It ignited that spark of island patriotism which flickers, steadfastly on the edge of going out, in my fluttering Uisteach’s heart. 

So impressed was I that I decided to have a word with Mull Theatre’s Artistic Director, Alasdair McCrone.  He enlightened me on what’s happening with the players in the coming year, and spoke freely about his views on Scotland’s artistic future.  Theatre is a busy thing across Scotland at the moment, and there’s a lot to consider.

“There seems to be a grand tradition in these parts to spend absolutely nothing on something until every last bit of use has been bled out of it”

For starters, the Eden Court in Inverness is undergoing a major transformation to the tune of £13 million, an ambitious project set to begin in June 2005.  (Yes, I know, this has nothing to do with Mull, apart from a tenuous association.  Bear with me.)

Eden Court is (arguably, I suppose) the cornerstone theatre of the Highlands and Islands.  The popular view of the figure for costs seems to be that they’re high – but painfully necessary.  The 1970’s portion of the building is falling apart.  It’s quite simply inadequate, and leaving it be just isn’t an option when the influence here places so much importance on creativity.

There seems to be a grand tradition in these parts to spend absolutely nothing on something until every last bit of use has been bled out of it – we are perfect examples of the ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ culture.  But it’s broke.  So we’re fixing it.  And by God, we plan to do a darn good job.

In light of the Eden Court plans (see? – told you I’d get to the point), it seems pertinent to bring up the home of Mull Theatre, the ‘Little Theatre’ which sits in Dervaig outside Tobermory.  Yes, it’s a lovely name, isn’t it?  It brings to mind a quaint little place with a familial atmosphere, an island oasis of cosiness. 

Well, think again.  A leaking roof, a far from comfortable backstage area, and a seating capacity of only 43 are just a few of its myriad problems.  It’s not only inadequate, it’s completely non- cost effective!  As a result, the Little Theatre is rarely used anymore, McCrone preferring the Aros Hall in Tobermory proper of late. 
 
In light of the funding available, it seems to make sense that Mull Theatre have been looking for funding and for alternative premises for years.  As McCrone puts it, ‘It would seem appropriate that the Highlands and Islands premier touring theatre company has its premier venue.’  Hard to argue with. 

Unfortunately, the funding bodies didn’t see it that way.  Their willingness to bring productions to our far-flung corners marked Mull Theatre out as a touring company, and thus a venue was deemed unnecessary.

“It’s the juxtaposition of cosmopolitan artistic culture with serene ‘ruralness’ that Mull Theatre do so well.”

With the lease on the existing “Mull Little Theatre” expiring on 31st December 2006, they are in the process of  securing new facilities, as well as a half-century lease on a plot of land outside Tobermory.  Plans are currently in development for a ‘Mull HQ’.  The main aim is to construct somewhere ‘a little less little’, as Alasdair puts it: a decent-sized production theatre which will enable them to stage decent-sized productions, and to do so on a more consistent basis. 

McCrone hopes this will work the other way as well, attracting productions to Mull from a variety of companies across the lands, and perhaps even offer some opportunity for collaboration between companies.  All this development is sure to attract some national attention, creating more work for the theatre company whilst they’re creating an infrastructure to support it.

It’s the juxtaposition of cosmopolitan artistic culture with serene ‘ruralness’ that Mull Theatre do so well.  That’s what will spur our artistic community on, and remind us why all this funding is essential.  It’s a kick-start, enabling the wide world of literary and theatrical culture to bring enlightenment (21st century style) to Scotland’s most barren parts.

And once our home-grown talent gets a chance to flourish, we can carry some weight on the artistic scene of Britain, and the world beyond her doors.  But even more importantly than that, we can have a cracking time doing it.

If that sounds good to you, I’d highly recommend catching Mull Theatre when they bring their shows your way. The first item on the agenda is a revival of Martin McDonagh’s ‘The Lonesome West’, the black comedy about two bickering Irish brothers which was enormously well received when it played last July.  The key roles are reprised by Mull’s shining stars Stephen Clyde and Alan Steele, with Beth Marshall providing the female object of attention, and Kevin Lennon as the Irish Catholic guilt in the guise of Father Welsh.

Last year’s production gained enough national attention for Scotland’s larger theatres to become interested, and as a result it will be showing in Glasgow’s Tron Theatre and the Dundee Rep this time around.  Each theatre gets the show for a week in June, but the play is quite appropriately set to begin again in Mull – with one small change: the venue is not the Masonic Hall as it was last year, but the Aros Hall.

In keeping with the dark theme but moving from ‘tried and tested’ to ‘brand spanking new’, the summer production will be a commission from playwright Peter Arnott, ‘Cyprus’.  A spy thriller with a political twist, this promises to be story of intrigue set in the hidden highlands.  It’s about an ex-secret service agent, attempting to escape his secrets and inevitably finding they’ve followed him north.

The autumn brings something for the family, with a stage adaptation of the popular children’s books ‘Katie Morag’.  The brainchild of Coll’s Mairi Hedderwick, the books have an impressive following amongst the little people; so acting out the stories and adding a bit of music certainly seems like a winner, as ideas go. 

On a side-note, the grown-ups in the audience might be pleased to read that the production is an alternative to (for ‘alternative’ read ‘backlash’) the by-now quite trite Balamory Culture which has (according to everybody who’s never been there) ‘Put Mull on the Map’.  ‘Katie Morag’ promises to show us the Hebrides from a kid’s point of view, with not a PC Plum in sight.

‘The Lonesome West’ is at Aros Hall, Tobermory on 26 May-13 June; Tron Theatre, Glasgow ,14-22 June; Dundee Rep , Dundee, 23–29 June.

‘Cyprus’ opens at Mull Little Theatre, Tobermory on 21 July and runs until 19 August.

‘Katie Morag’ opens at Aros Hall, Tobermory on 25 August, and will tour the Highlands and Islands, stopping at Glasgow’s Citizen’s Theatre in September.

© Eileen Bell, 2005

Links

• Mull Theatre website 

Kevin Lennon as Hyde and Beth Marshall as Sophie © Douglas Robertson

FOR MANY, Robert Louis Stevenson’s split personality novella is a Hammer-horror potboiler of titillatory intent. For 1970s pop star turned entrepreneur Paul Nicholas, it’s a musical, but let’s not go there.

Mercifully, for Mull Theatre it’s an intelligent inquiry into a schizophrenic state which goes beyond Victorian gothic. Using two actors to delineate the two faces of good and evil is a masterstroke, even though things aren’t exactly black and white in Alasdair McCrone and Robert Paterson’s brand new adaptation.

With Alan Steele’s mild-mannered doctor already an eccentric loner with ideas on immortality considered odd enough to see him all but ostracised by his peers, a needy  penchant for prostitutes doesn’t help his cause. Neither does making a clumsy pass at his brainy maid turned assistant.

His alter ego, meanwhile, played by Kevin Lennon, is a weasely coward who vents his spleen on women in an altogether more explicit manner. Such are the psycho-sexual dysfunctions apparent in a production that, while far from spectacular, exposes the seamier back roads of the human mind in a hauntingly atmospheric manner.

With Beth Marshall lending solid support as the more feminine polar opposites – from nice girl with ambition to tart with a heart – this Jekyll & Hyde takes a walk on the dark side that gives what is often perceived as a hoary old classic a sparky injection of chemically enhanced life.

Jekyll and Hyde is on tour at the following venues:
Durness Hall, Durness, Monday 1 November 2004
Lyth Arts Centre, Lyth, Tuesday 2-Wednesday 3 November 2004
Invergordon Arts Centre, Invergordon, Thursday 4 November 2004
Glenmoriston Millenium Hall, Glenmoriston, Friday 5 November 2004
Birnam Institute, Dunkeld, Saturday 6 November 2004
Dundee Rep, Dundee, Wednesday 10-Saturday 13 November 2004
Gibson Community Centre, Garelochead, Monday 15 November 2004
Cairndow Millenium Hall, Cairndow, Tuesday 16 November 2004
Campbeltown, Wednesday 17 November 2004
Ramsay Hall, Port Ellen, Islay, Thursday 18 November 2004
Ardrishaig Public Hall, Ardrishaig, Friday 19 November 2004
Easdale Hall, Easdale, Saturday 20 November 2004
Arainn Shuaineirt (The Sunart Centre), Strontian, Monday 22 November 2004
Mallaig and Morar Community Centre, Mallaig, Tuesday 23 November 2004
Corran Halls, Oban, Thursday 25 November 2004
Bunessan Hall, Isle of Mull, Friday 26 November 2004
Aros Hall, Tobermory, Isle of Mull, Saturday 27 November 2004

© Neil Cooper, 2004

Beth Marshall

MULL THEATRE’S revival of this very successful stage version of Compton Mackenzie’s famous novel (and Sandy Mackendrick’s even more famous film version) has lost none of its appeal in the seven years since it was last staged.

The clever adaptation sets the action of the play in a radio studio in the late 1940s, where three actors and two technicians are recreating Whisky Galore for the listening audience on the BBC Home Service, thereby solving myriad narrative problems at a stroke.

The familiar story of the sinking of the good ship Cabinet Minister off the fictional islands of Great and Little Todday is inevitably trimmed and reshaped considerably, but the central core of the narrative remains intact, along with the various dramatic relationships, love affairs and familial conflicts that weave through the book in counterpoint to the story of the liberation of the precious cargo of whisky.

The studio setting adds its own narrative level to proceedings. We not only get to see the actors at work – all taking multiple roles – and the on-stage creation of the various sound effects (Beth Marshall’s evocation of sex-crazed dog is a comic tour de force) in the course of the ‘broadcast’, but also intuit some subtle relationships at work amongst the characters.

The programme carries a picture of the previous cast, but the new team of actors stamp their own character on the piece from the outset. As well as the aforementioned Beth Marshall as Iona Carr, Alan Steele (as Hubert Clachlan-Bell) and Steve Clyde (Nathan Dane) are her fellow thespians, while Kevin Lennon (Ivor Ash) is the studio manager, and Kay McIntyre (Mae Duguid) his assistant (and just what is going on in that booth anyway?).

The ‘studio’ audience gets to contribute their mite to proceedings, shouting along to cue cards held up by the technicians, including a chance to brush up on Gaelic toasts. A very entertaining comedy, and if anything, even sharper this time round.

Whisky Galore can be seen at the following venues:
Spectrum Theatre, Inverness, Friday 11 and Saturday 12 June 2004
Byre Theatre, St Andrews, Tuesday 15 – Saturday 19 June
An Tobar, Tobermory, Isle of Mull, Tuesday 22 – Friday 25 June
Screen Machine, Tobermory,  Isle of Mull, on:
Monday 5 July – Tuesday 6 July
Tuesday 3 August
Thursday 5 August
Monday 9 August – Wednesday 11 August
Thursday 19 August – Friday 20 Aug
Monday 23 August – Wednesday 25 August
Thursday 2 September – Wed 8 September (not Sunday)
© Kenny Mathieson, 2004

As Mull Theatre company prepare to leave their tiny base at Dervaig, director ALASDAIR McCRONE writes an open letter in which he describes their hopes and plans for a new theatre in Tobermory, and invites support and feedback for the project.

Dear Friend,

You may know that Mull Theatre is a professional producing and promoting theatre based on the Isle of Mull in Argyll. It is currently a Scottish Arts Council Core Funded Company with a remit to commission, produce, tour and promote theatre throughout the Highlands and Islands, particularly within Argyll and Bute, and to contribute to the broad spectrum of theatre provision for Scotland.

The company has operated for many years from the tiny, remote and now rather dilapidated Little Theatre in Dervaig, once noted as being the smallest professional theatre in the world. Now Mull Theatre is looking to move on and hopes to create a modern venue and production facility on Mull.  We are looking for your input and support in this process.

Over the summer of 2003, Scottish Cultural Enterprise, in association with Construction Project Management Specialists and Surveyors, Hardies, undertook a detailed feasibility study looking into options for the future of Mull Theatre, following the expiry of the lease on its current building at Dervaig in 2006. This study has now been concluded and submitted along with an application for Stage One Lottery Funding to the Scottish Arts Council.

In recent years, there has been a major shift in the perception of professional theatre in the Highlands. Partly through the creation (through HI-Arts) of the Highland Theatre Network, there has been a considerable upsurge in the range and quality of the output from Highland theatre companies.

For example, it is now clear that Mull Theatre is a significant contributor to the Scottish national theatre community with its productions regularly appearing at some of the country’s leading venues as well as in theatres and halls the length and breadth of Scotland.  We believe there is a sense of ownership and pride that work created within the Highlands can make an impact and compete on the national scene.  At the same time, there is a tremendous struggle to paper over the cracks and allow that work to happen.

Our most recent production, Kidnapped, written and created by a Mull Theatre team, was produced and opened at and with Perth Theatre because the nature and scale of the production meant that we had nowhere on Mull to build it, rehearse it or perform it. The show ran at Perth for two weeks, toured Scotland for 5 weeks (breaking box office records), and will appear for two weeks next year at the Glasgow Citizens Theatre, a further two weeks at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh and a week at Eden Court in Inverness. But on Mull, there’s nowhere for it to play.

Our current home, the little theatre in Dervaig, is so tiny and idiosyncratic (seating only 43) that anything not specifically designed for the space has to be completely re-designed and rebuilt to tour, even for comparable small highland locations.  At the same time, size restrictions mean that any more than three people on stage constitutes a crowd scene.  But the problem is even more fundamental – the building is a tiny, very old, patched-up and falling-apart converted cow-byre owned by and in the grounds of a tourist hotel. It has never been at the centre of the community and is hard to get to.  The roof leaks, the dressing room loo is unspeakable, disabled access is very poor, etc.

The rustic charm experienced and enjoyed by thousands of people over the years wears very thin when one considers that this ramshackle shed is the only home of the only core-funded producing professional theatre for the entire Highlands and Islands of Scotland. That gives a clear message to locals and visitors, audiences and professional staff, about the perceived economic and social significance of the arts in rural Scotland.  30 years ago, this might have seemed unique and charming, now it is simply embarrassing.  It’s hard to attract and recruit quality staff when they’re forced to work in conditions they would not tolerate at home.

Now, more than ever, the theatre wishes to play a key role in the communities of Mull, Argyll & Bute and the Highlands & Islands.  Tobermory is becoming something of a boomtown with visitor numbers greater than ever before.  The quantity and quality of the visitor infrastructure is growing, as is its socio-economic importance.  The potential spin-offs for Mull residents are considerable. A new theatre building of quality might contribute hugely to the development of the whole area.

There is a key relationship between Mull Theatre’s various roles – that of creation, production, venue and touring, which makes it essential in our view that we build here both the facilities to create quality theatre and to have it seen.  The need for a production centre to facilitate the company’s touring work is as profound as the need for a venue in which it can be seen, but the two are intertwined, a support for each others’ existence and a showcase for the best creative Scotland has to offer.

It would be easy to create some tin huts and a well-equipped workshop at minimal cost to support a purely touring company – but how many touring companies in Scotland have been around since 1966?  We believe it is partly the strong identification and association with its home and its venue which has ensured the longevity and existence of Mull Theatre.

After many months of detailed work, having looked at sites in various locations on Mull, the feasibility study concluded that the option offering the best range of artistic, social and economic benefits would be at Ledaig, on the waterfront in Tobermory. This proposal foresees the development of a new theatre, with a flexible auditorium that will be capable of holding up to 150 people, along with other spaces such as a rehearsal room, a meeting room and offices.

In addition to Mull Theatre’s own programme of work, which will be greatly enhanced through access to bigger and better facilities, the new Theatre would be furnished with state of the art media presentation equipment, which opens up the possibility of a year round cinema programme, embracing new releases as well as historic material which might be of interest to the many visitors to Mull. Looking at the wider cultural scene, this equipment could also provide an “electronic window on the world”, allowing work and performances to be beamed into Mull from elsewhere in Scotland and indeed beyond.

As well as the film and media side of things, the ambition is to create a family friendly environment ultimately providing “wet weather” attractions suitable for the increasing number of young people visiting the island (and indeed those at home) from basic play resources to especially tailored entertainment for young people and families.

There will also be scope for offering more opportunities to the local community to become involved in the work of the company and to develop new skills.  Our longer-term aim is to enhance our role as a trainer and educational resource in the performing arts. Through being based on the waterfront, there is also scope for incorporating much longed-for facilities for the boating community, as well as enhancing existing provision of conveniences for the general public in the town.

The overall vision is very much one of collaboration and we are keen to work closely with existing venues such as An Tobar and the Aros Hall to see how we might pool resources and use the additional facilities that this development would see being invested in Tobermory to everyone’s advantage.

We are also keen to see how this theatre could provide the sort of facilities that are key to attracting the conference market sector to Mull, thereby helping to bring fresh hotel and accommodation business to the island and capture all of the associated economic benefits that flow from this sector.

The projected cost of this development is just under £2.2m in cash and it is projected to be ready for the 2007 season.  The contribution sought from Argyll and Bute Council will primarily be in the form of support-in-kind through access to land, with the majority of the cash required being generated through national and EU funding proposals, particularly via SAC’s National Lottery Capital Development Funds.

Looking to the immediate future, the next stage of the project will be to undertake a design competition, which the Royal Incorporation of Architects of Scotland believes will prove immensely popular within the architectural profession. We are looking to ways in which we can engage with the local community during this design competition phase, including scope for running a schools project, so that everyone can be involved and help shape the final plans.  However before any of these many benefits can begin to flow, we have to secure funding from the Scottish Arts Council to undertake the design competition.

We are currently consulting individuals and representative organisations, hopefully to win support, as without it we may well lose out on getting public investment to bring this to fruition.

Yours sincerely,

Alasdair McCrone, Artistic Director

Mull Theatre's 'Kidnapped'

THIS ADAPTATION of the Robert Louis Stevenson thriller has come in for some criticism because of its design. And I’d agree with some other reviewers that Robin Peoples has devised one of those clever sets that are better in theory than in practice. It’s a number of curved wooden boxes that fit inside each other and open up to form a whole variety of exteriors, interiors and landscapes. One minute it’s a stately home, the next it’s a ship at sea.

So far, so ingenious, but it has two shortcomings. One is that it takes time to rearrange the pieces, slowing the pace of the performance. The other is that it restricts the actors’ space for creativity: the designer has done all the imaginative work for them.

But that’s not entirely the problem in this co-production by Perth Theatre and Mull Theatre. Peoples’ set does, at least, reconfigure itself quite efficiently. It’s more to do with the adaptation by Robert Paterson and Alasdair McCrone. They have, of course, charged themselves with a fearsome task: to condense into a couple of hours this epic adventure about the young David Balfour and his attempt to claim his inheritance, hampered by abduction, clan warfare and the Scottish landscape.

But their version of the story is uneven. It veers between scenes that are so short that they are over by the time you’ve worked out what’s going on and others that are dragged down by long and undramatic exposition. It makes for a bumpy ride.

The result is that ideas that should have given the evening a theatrical spark – such as the set and the continued presence of John Davidson on violin – start to seem fussy and uneconomical. Things aren’t helped by Simon Sewell’s gloomy lighting design that casts most faces – and some whole scenes – in shadow.

I’d like to say that the large and spirited company of actors rises above these distractions but, such is the nature of adaptations for the stage, few of them have parts big enough to get their teeth into. Andrew Clark does bring a fair swagger to the role of Alan Stewart, the lawless clan chief, but there’s little tension when playing against David Fitzgerald’s uncharismatic interpretation of Balfour. The character might be naive, stuck up and conservative, but that shouldn’t account for so flat a performance.

Kidnapped can be seen at the following Highland venues:
Tuesday 7 October 2003 at Town Hall, Inverurie
Wednesday 8 October 2003 at Town Hall, Elgin
Monday 13 October 2003 at McPhail Centre, Ullapool
Tuesday 14 October 2003 at Village Hall, Lochinver
Wednesday 15 October 2003 at Lyth Arts Centre-in-Exile, Ross Institute, Hallkirk
Thursday 16 October 2003 at Village Hall, Durness
Friday 17 October 2003 at Carnegie Hall, Clashmore
Saturday 18 October 2003 at Ardross Hall
Monday 20 October 2003 at Arainn Shuaineirt, Strontian
Tuesday 21 October 2003 at Bunessan Hall, Isle of Mull
Thursday 23 October 2003 at Pavilion, Rothesay, Isle of Bute
Friday 24 October 2003 at Ramsey Hall, Port Ellen, Isle of Islay
Saturday 25 October 2003 at Public Hall, Ardrishaig
Monday 27 October 2003 at Victoria Halls, Campbeltown
Tuesday 28 October 2003 at Gibson Hall, Garelochhead
Monday 3 November 2003 at Community Hall, Mallaig
Tuesday 4 November 2003 at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, Isle fo Skye
Wednesday 5 November 2003 at Community Hall, Nethy Bridge
Thursday 6 November 2003 at Village Hall, Ballachulish
Friday 7-Saturday 8 November 2003 at Corran Halls, Oban

© Mark Fisher, 2003

Mull Theatre's 'Skylight'

LIKE ALL great writing, the themes in David Hare’s play Skylight are universal and timeless. The play is set in a cramped London flat somewhere in North London, between Willesden and Kensal Rise. Kyra, a young and idealistic Maths teacher, lives an almost ascetic life devoted to teaching underprivileged children in a poor inner-London comprehensive school.  But she is content.

On a cold Winter’s night threatening snow, her peace is shattered by the unexpected arrival of 18-year-old Edward who bursts into her flat reminding her of the six years she lived with his parents, Alice and Tom.  Alice has died, and Edward is concerned about his father and hopes that Kyra will intervene.

Soon after, Tom turns up, clutching a whisky bottle.  An affluent restaurateur and very much a man of the 80s, he is still reeling from his wife’s death and obviously hopes to get back with Kyra, whom he loves.

What follows is a moving, often witty exploration of love and how impossible it is to sustain that love when faced with differing and passionately-held moral and political ideals.

Beth Marshall’s performance as Kyra is masterful, and can be truly described as luminous. Hers is the voice of pre-Tony Blair’s Britain, urgently fighting for the underdog.  John Langford as Tom is a perfect foil to Kyra’s empassioned performance.  His restrained, often moving performance – full of angry pauses and baffled expressions – strongly emphasises their clashing ideals.  He is utterly dumbfounded by her lifestyle and pathetically unable to either understand or respect her way of life.

Young David Fitzgerald, in his first professional role, provides the catalyst – a role he fills with impish charm and enthusiasm.

The play ends with a wonderful surprise provided by Edward, hinting at better things to come.

Yet again, Alasdair McCrone, the artistic director of Mull Theatre, has chosen a play that speaks both to the heart and mind.  It is this uncanny ability of his that has made Mull Theatre such a successful, professional enterprise.

His choice of play was strongly backed by Robert Paterson’s clever and sensitive production of what is one of Hare’s most personal and moving plays. The audience’s response – in the tense silences, bursts of laughter, and finally thunderous applause – fully justified their choice.

Skylight is in repertory at Mull Theatre until 3 September 2003.

© Giuliana Ashford, 2003