Category Archives: The Blog

A TASTE OF HONEY Shelagh Delaney

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A Taste of Honey, Shelagh Delaney’s ground breaking 1950s play about changing and unchanging social order in the working class Britain of her times, is the opening 2013 production at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre, Grindlay St.

Written when Delaney was 18 and taken up by Joan Littlewood, the play is breath-takingly good. Tony Cownie, who directed this revival, names his favourite line in the programme (when did they become £2.50, even for subscribers?), but we’ll all have our own. A Taste of Honey is that kind of work.

Delaney tackles the unchanging cycle of single parent creating single parent, homophobia, drink and racism, with such precision and insight, it’s hard to remember the writer was as young as she was. Did she simply record what she saw and heard? At eighteen, she’d not travelled or even studied that much. And yet she gives us a play of warmth and humour contrasted with bleakness and dystopian dark that challenges many other writers who were older, had studied, had travelled.

Performed without overt violence or sexual scenes, the play involves and delights its audience in equal measure. As the second act moves through, you do begin to wonder how it will finish and the programme hints at Littlewood having influenced the ending. My companion was unhappy with the ending. He’d grown to care so much for Jo, he wanted to know more. Can there be a finer tribute to an author?

Excellent performances from the whole cast. Terrific set, used to great effect. Get along there. Run ends 9th February ’13

HONOURS – Douglas Currie, Edinburgh

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Write, watch and critique is so pleased to be offering congratulations to Edinburgh’s Douglas Currie on his award of the British Empire Medal for services to Drama and Teaching.

Although this Olympic year must be the year of the sports’ god, to those of us labouring away in other fields, Douglas has long been a role model. People in the know will cite his long association with the Mercators dramatic society, his running of the SCDA’s library in South Bridge and his many years of providing wonderful Christmas pantos and evenings of entertainment in Mayfield Salisbury Church.

While writing with Citadel Theatre (now Arts), I was on the same list in Riddel’s Court during the Edinburgh Fringe with the Mercators; Douglas at the helm. They have brought several entertaining exposées of well kent literary figures to the public. Now they bring the Fringe to South Edinburgh.

It wasn’t possible to speak to Douglas today about his BEM Honour, but his wife, and dramatic colleague Rosemary, said how very exciting it has all been.

Congratulations, Douglas. Edinburgh is proud of your efforts.

THE MAGIC FLUTE

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Mozart’s The Magic Flute is a mysterious hybrid of an opera. Partly spoken, partly sung and with enormous scope for nonsense, it looks easy and must be very, very difficult.

Scottish Opera’s Magic Flute at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh last night (22nd Nov) was a tour de force of theatricality and great singing.

The three ladies were sculpted into black and spangly costumes which almost deserved to be listed with the rest of the cast. The three boys were hard to hear in their first appearance as the wires for suspending them over the stage malfunctioned and they appeared on the floor, but really too far back for such immature voices. They had the opportunity to fly later. Scottish Opera have chosen six lads from the National Youth choir of Scotland and the National Boys’ choir to share the parts.

The Queen of the Night, whose battle with Sarastro, is the basis of a pretty ropey plot-line – what is it with opera? Ah, yes, the singing! – was magnificantly sung by the Japenes soprano, Mari Moriya. More costume worth going to see for its own sake and fantastic make-up completed a perfect rendition.

Richard Burkhard was an endearing and authoratative Papageno although his costume was not as wayout as some Papgenos I’ve seen.

Overall, the near-capacity audience left The Magic Flute much cheered. A wonderful pre-festive evening directed by Sir Thomas Allen and presided over by conductor, Ekhart Wycik.

Saturday 24th in Edinburgh and 29th Nov and 1st Dec in Belfast (Grand Opera House)

NaNoWriMo Update Everybody’s doing It

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Participant 100x100 (2)     I’m not on target, but my NaNoWriMo is very nearly on target.

Highlights of NaNo include meeting lots of Edinburgh and Scottish writers I knew not of before.

A carriage full of lovely characters have been driven onto the screen by NaNo. They’ve been around since New voices 2011. I’m now hearing them talk – truly necessary for the way I write a play or a novel.

Today, I hope, the villain is going to slither from his hole. Who knows.

NaNoWriMo is all consuming – although life clearly gets in the way – now at 16,000 words.

I did make time to get to Tightlaced theatre’s double bill at the Storytelling Centre. Charlie & My ’45 by Robert Howat explored the exploitation of the young by war-mongering old men and the power hungry. A rather bleak exploration, but hit the mark for Remembrance week, I thought. The other play by Fiona McDonald, I Promise I shall Not Play Billiards, showed much writing promise. Using four actresses (yes, I’m unreconstructed – they were women) to good dramatic effect to explore a divided personality, McDonald re-told the story of Madeleine Smith. Perhaps relied a little heavily on what the audience would know about the girl found Not Proven of the murder of her lover/paramour/friend, but overall interst holding. Debbie Cannon’s performance as the baddie stood out for me. Titles are important and this play’s was counter-productive for me. Tightlaced theatre are bringing great productions to the Story Telling theatre.

Royal Lyceum’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream has to be one of life’s most enriching theatrical experiences. Even when the Director, Matthew Lenton, sets it in mid-winter, Shakespeare’s language still has the power to charm, excite, soothe – when one can hear it. A few folk in the bar at the interval were expressing difficulty catching the words of the female actors. Something of a contrast to the over-loud Guid Sisters.

The counter-indicative weather did nothing for me. I really want my Midsummer Night to be warm and filled with the buzz of wings, whether of fairies or bees. I found it just too incredible that everyone would go off into the woods in swirling snow. However, what the cast then did with the physical theatre of being out in the cold was at times very funny. Miles Yekinni and Kevin Mains as Midsummer Night’s Demetrius and Lysander were hilariously intertwined in a hopeless wrestling match that threatened to stop the performance.

Ifan Meredith gave a somewhat emasculated performance as Oberon/Theseus. I wanted more – more authority, more gravitas and, as Oberon, more sinister. Jordan Young, on the other hand, was having a ball playing Bottom and we enjoyed that. Maybe Pyramus and Thisbe slid over into excess, but Barnaby Power was a splendid Peter Quince and the Mechanicals were a deserved highlight.

I’ve seen many, many productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This wasn’t the best, but a good night out and great to see the members of the Young Lyceum getting a chance on stage.

Johnny McKnight’s Cinderella is up next at the Royal Lyceum. Starts 29th November.

 

SPELLING IT OUT

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My novelist friend, Janice Horton, has asked for spells to mark the publication of her new Novella: How do You Voodoo.

Spelling, in the more conventional sense is something I try hard over for this blog. Spelling, in any other sense, is alien. However, in the spirit of Janice’s blogging party my Spell for you to try at home (NOT) is as follows:

Ye Most Moderne Receipt for Causing Directors to Reply to Submissions of Great Plays

Step ONE Write a great play

Step TWO Stash it with a kipper in the glove compartment of the director’s wife’s/husband’s car

Step THREE Ask if they’ll take you back at the day job.

Janice’s website is at: http://janicehortonwriter.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/its-only-one-more-week.html

CHICAGO

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Theatre in Chicago comes in all sorts of packages. I saw two excellent plays, Good People and Wrong Mountain, while there in September ’12.

Chicago is of course home to the world renowned Steppenwolfe Theatre and it was a joy to discover the theatre and a selection of good eateries, one stop along the Red L from where I was staying. Steppenwolfe were showing GOOD PEOPLE by David Lindsay-Abaire, starring Mariann Mayberry.

Good People is about the struggle to get out of the swamp. Missed opportunities, wrong choices – no choices, racism, other prejudices and Charity. But the greatest of these is Charity.

Well – is it? Mariann’s character, Margaret, seems to attract the vengeance of the Gods for no reason other than a lack of ultimate honesty. She needs to see folk as they are and not as they would be if they weren’t. Muddled? You bet.

The dialogue was sharp, the twists in the plot not always predictable and the acting spot on. I didn’t see the resolution to Margaret’s immediate problem – imminent homelessness – until the start of the final scene. I may never trust a doctor again.

Wrong Mountain on at Chicago’s tiny Second Stage – just a bus ride along, is by David Hirson and had a cast of 14. Sadly there were only 10 of us in the audience.

The strong cast led by Richard Sandoval as the second string poet who once met a great poet and Douglas Vickers as the second string actor who did work with a great actor, carried on regardless giving us a roller-coaster performance of this thought-provoking and occasionally very funny play.

Are you climbing the wrong mountain? is the premise at the play’s heart. It’s a good question for everyone who ever thought that to be good, literature has to be obscure: that the Times reader is less worthy (and better informed?) than the person with the tabloid tucked under their arm: that there isn’t a Romeo in the breast of the fifty year-old: that there isn’t quality in the work of the beginner.

Although, Henry Dennet, the misguided poet, comes to realise his own wrong mountain, Hirson uses another character, Guy Halperin a successful popular playwright, to demonstrate the despair of failed ambition. Halperin has spent years achieving production of his work and then popularity, but Dennet does it accidentally while trying not to.

Second Stage is housed in a theatre which might be constructed out of a former retail space or restaurant. It’s another shop-front in a row of shop-fronts. They operate as theatre-in-the-round and I couldn’t work out how the cast got from front to back.

Theatre in Chicago was a great experience with one caveat. Why do American actors shout so much? It took my Scottish ears a few minutes to absorb the volume and sort the words out from the noise.

 

Wonderland – Shakespearian experience?

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Wonderland, presented by Vanishing Point and conceived and directed by Matthew Lenton was a challenging watch for most of us. Those of us who try to write plays maybe found it more challenging than others.

I want a writer. The absence of a central voice grates. My expectations now change when I see that ominous phrase ‘in the rehearsal room’ or the other improvised by the company. There’s nothing wrong with being a writer/director. It has a respectable track record. As companies like Vanishing Point demonstrate there’s lots to be gained by listening to the cast and designers, but I think the end result doesn’t represent the truth of the vision if everyone has had a hand in diluting it.

The subject matter – on-line pornography, the lure of fame, sexual bullying, difficult teen parent relations – didn’t make comfortable viewing and on Thursday night when I saw Wonderland, several people walked out. The young man next to me hung on after his party had left (drama in the aisles as well as on the stage), until the heroine died. “I can go now,” he said. Writing a thesis? Defying his hosts? Proving a point? Who knows. Whatever, it wasn’t the end.

I do think the audience needs to stick with a play through the ending and Vanishing Point’s Wonderland is a good example of that.

Some of the text was brilliant. I loved the line delivered by Flavia Gusmao to her on-line punter: “So – sue me!” Some lacked clarity. I thought the home background was undeveloped and couldn’t understand why a mother was cutting off her clearly distressed child. In places the set got in the way. Yes, it was a window. Did it have to be a window with a line down the middle?

It had only the most tenuous link to Alice in Wonderland which I found disappointing. Was that simply a device to provide a suitable blurb for the Festival brochure? I am pleased I didn’t let early reviews put me off, though. Wonderland was thought provoking. The young cast were extremely brave. I found the level of violence portrayed about equivalent to a Shakespeare play, but the level of violence and coercion hinted at in the hidden worlds of pornography, terrifying to contemplate.

Viewing on-line pornography is a vile addiction because, unlike alcohol for example, it’s not likely to be the addicted person who is destroyed. It’s likely to be the vulnerable lured into participation who bear the scars – if they survive.

Midsummer Night’s Dream (As You Like It)

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A Chekov International Theatre Festival/Dmitry Krymov’s Laboratory/School of Dramatic Art Theatre Production. Part of World Shakespeare Festival 2012

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of my all time favourite plays, but having said that, I know it’s because of the sheer inventiveness it encourages. Directors, choreographers, musicians and actors have a wonderful time performing a play that’s loosely based on what the author, William Shakespeare, wrote.

At the King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, Dmitry Krymov’s production, missing out almost all of the Midsummer Night’s Dream script, was looser than most. As my companion pointed out the director, Dmitry Krymov, was first a set designer – and didn’t it show?

The production concentrates on the mechanicals play, Pyramus and Thisbe. It starts with the cast of mechanicals in the audience trying to bring on their set of branches. Front row seats, end of row seats can see you joining the cast without either audition or equity card. Then they get themselves onto the stage and we catch our first view of Venya the Jack Russell. Venya proved very popular with the audience and the man behind me gave his wife a running commentary of what the dog was thinking – clever that!

Next the audience within the play arrives and seats themselves around the front of the stage and in the boxes. Much slapstick humour follows as they break flimsy barriers and inadvertantly throw rubbish over each other. Their running commentary is full of humour and spot on one liners. (I wonder if the man behind me was the writer?)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream lends itself to pantomime and circus skills and the cast were great. Acrobatics abounded and the way they manoeuvred the giant puppets of Pyramus and Thisbe jaw-droppingly accurate. Traditional acting wasn’t neglected, however, and the new play had a believable inner tension. There were three lovely voices, some instrumental work and the final effect of the dance.

I didn’t expect the dance of the swans, but it was just right.

I counted around 40 performers on stage for the final bow, every one a winner. Oh, and my companion appreciated the question and answer piece in the  programme. Nothing like a bit of de-mystification to help one appreciate what’s going on.

Letter of Last Resort and Good With People

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Traverse Theatre: Letter of Last Resort and Good With People are two excellent pieces from two of Scotland’s best contemporary voices, but what they have to do with one another is a moot point. Certainly the nuclear threat comes up in each and that may be that. My companion speculated that they were too short to stand alone – maybe.

Letter of last Resort exploits the Yes, Prime Minister format, but with a female PM. Dear John takes on a quite other and sinister opening to a letter. Philisophical musings raised issues of chilling importance, but rendered them laughable.

Good With People featured the impeccable Blythe Duff who is really an underused theatrical actor of extraordinary skill – more please. The script had moments of pathos, beauty and illumination, but was eventually unsatisfying. The effect of bullying on the relatives of the bullied could be explored to greater length. The creation of a bully could also have been probed more clinically and perhaps more sympathetically. Yet again, I wondered why there were so few characters. Has drama become only story-telling?

I came out feeling I had had a really good theatrical experience, but yearning for another show like Austentatious (I see the Scotsman have given it a well deserved **** – you read it here first, folks) where I could laugh in amusement – and relax. I’m sort of longing for entertainment at this stage in the Festival experience, rather than clever occasional, in-jokes.

By-the-way why have cast lists/programmes gone out of fashion?