East Kilbride Arts Centre is the next venue for Theatre Broad with Peter Pan Man and – of course – my JMB & M’Connachie.

Friday 25th May at 7.30pm

Tickets from:  01355 261000

I was on welcoming duty at my church yesterday and very struck, as I often am, by the theatre of worship. There are never-changing scenes with familiar words and music. Yet, when a christening, wedding or funeral is taking place, there can be truly heart stopping ‘and then’ moments.

The tale of a lost python, the young mum so pre-occupied by the christening lunch, she began to leave and had to be called back by the Minister’s gentle, “I haven’t finished yet” or the baby yelling, while a shy bride tells her vows.

The Passion Plays and the Morality plays brought religious thought to the non educated masses for centuries, but it’s difficult to know whether the church’s sense of the theatrical led or follows.

The Church of Scotland congregation doesn’t use colourful robes, but colour floods into many of its buildings through their stained glass. A stage dressed for sober hued Ministers to engage their followers by the quality of their sermons is a challenging proposition.

Despite having written the words, Robert and Alan were able to bring a tear to my eye at some moments during last night’s opening of JMB & M’Connachie in Stirling. Wonderfully assured and accomplished performances from all the cast held the audience.

JM Barrie was a giant of Scottish literature, but how did his genius operate?

Your chance to delve into the secrets of how the writer’s mind works is tonight – if you’re within travelling distance of Cottiers Theatre,  Glasgow.

The programme is called PETER PAN MAN

7.30 pm Tickets 0141 357 4000

Theatre Broad open in The Tolbooth, Stirling with Peter Pan Man at 7.30 pm. It’s a nervous few hours for me until the lights go down and Mark Harvey’s wonderful music creates the Barrie atmosphere. Like the man, the music plays with our sense of reality.

I hope the play does too. M’Connachie & JMB Who is M’Connachie? Come along and find out. Come up and say hello.

I’m reading Jennifer Worth’s wonderful book, Call The Midwife. Last night I read the chapters about her relationship with the nun, Sister Evangelina. Apart from telling the story of this remarkable woman, Worth mulls over the fact that the relationship never became one of trust, or respect or even tolerance. Everything she did prompted criticism and that caused her to be clumsy and awkward in the nun’s presence.

This morning, during that lovely period of being awake but not alert, a possible answer occurred to me. Did Sister Evangelina sense Worth’s writer’s observation and resist it? Did she see that while Worth the nurse and midwife was all she should be, there was another dimension? The standing apart that we all practise while the stories lodge in our brains is evident to many. It’s Barrie’s M’Connachie in us all.