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?

WATT

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WATT Samuel Beckett Texts selected from the novel and performed by Barry McGovern. McGovern performed the resulting one man play with exquisite timing taking us  back to a time when things like a railway ticket could be bought for a handful of pennies.

He didn’t have any other actors to help realise the physical comedy of two elderly lovers sitting first her on his knee, then him on hers, but he had the audience entranced by it nonetheless. Beckett’s language, so carefully crafted, is well served by the intimate surroundings of the Royal Lyceum Theatre.

Love Letters To The Public Transport System

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Molly Hunter took a quirky idea – I’m so grateful to be in love I must thank the people who took me, a non-driver, to where I met him  – and created a play of some depth. She intertwines the experience of the central character with related experiences of a playwright searching for an author he’s met once and a woman discovering her fiancee’s unfaithfulness. Do these others illuminate her experience? Maybe, but they certainly give Molly Hunter opportunity to showcase her repertoire of local British accents. Her Glasgow girl is toe-curlingly good. They also relieve the pressure on the central story with sparkling comedy/drama inserts.

All round an enjoyable hour. I’ll be looking out for more of this writer’s work.

Austentatious

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Superlatively good. Jane Austen as she never wrote and you never read. The company take the quiet humour of her observational comedy and twist through several degrees until the whole audience is roaring with laughter.

The cast are keen to have the audience interact and ask for title suggestions of the book JA didn’t write in order that they may improvise a play from them. Out of the basket comes Pride and Prejudice and one or two others until they settle on – today’s choice.

From there on the cast’s sound performances and mutual confidence move the story forward at break-neck speed. Comedic timing makes the one-liners sparkle, but the actors bring light and shade to the problem of living in your own time when you’re not of your own time.

Happy Ending.

Aug 2- 13, 15-26 at 13.30 (1h) The Counting House, West Nicholson St. Free (donations if desired at end)

 

Sometimes on the Telly

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Drama about drama is sort of like big fleas have little fleas, only the Road To Coronation Street, which was originally called Florizell Street, was more than that.

Daran Little’s script was entertaining, interesting and, for all struggling playwrights hoping to be noticed, a reminder of just how hard that is. (When checking out the writer’s name I had to expand the credits, because he doesn’t appear with the top ranked actors!) Take the politics of big business for a start. Our advertisers won’t like a play with mean streets and Northern (if you’re in London Manchester is North) accents. Then the Canadian chap in charge of commissioning, tries it out on the little people who do actually watch tv. Brilliant.

Casting with the writer on your shoulder demanding perfection became a fraught and haunting business. Lynda Baron, the actress chosen to play Violet Carsons sent shivers down my spine. Nostalgia is a great tool and I remember the early broadcasts – not least because we were allowed to stay up half an hour to watch – and my granny tut-tutting over Ena Sharples’ behaviour.

The other really startling shot was of the all-male board. None of that’s very far away, ladies. Keep it in mind.

Did everybody actually smoke that much? I do remember the first office I worked in where I shared the space with three folk who did, so probably. The fags became a non-speaking character in my eye. Must remember that trick.

Okay, back to the Fringe. I’m going venue spotting with a Director on Wednesday. Might let you know – on the other hand if we find a goody …

Edinburgh Fringe and Festival 2012

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TOE DIPPING TIME

Don’t you just love eating standing up – waiting for a bus that’s already late/lost/re-directed – finding box offices – finding venues – queuing in the rain?

It’s August. It’s Edinburgh.

First up was Ronan O’Donnell’s ANGELS starring, indeed he’s the only cast,             Iain Robertson at Traverse 2

Wonderful performance from Iain playing the wrongly accused security guard who writes porn in the library, the DI who sees the porn as corroborating evidence (of murder?), the Brief, the Irish ma, the drug addict shop-lifter and Scarlett Johanson. All on a bare stage with music and lighting changes.

The story is told by the accused acting it out. I wanted a little more of why the shop-lifter was obsessed with the guard and a little less stereotyping of the DI and Brief.

Powerful work. Worth your time.

 

Next I saw BLINK by Phil Porter, a two hander. Harry McEntire and Rosie Wyatt gave lovely performances of two very strange young persons.

Again the cast were called upon to act several other characters and move the props and furniture around the stage. Not bare this time, but rather oddly provided with two office desks, two cardboard boxes and a lawn.

A thoughtful piece that lingers…

 

Hi-Kick at the Main Hall, Assembly Hall was a play/dance/match for three generations. Performed by Seol and Company and choreographed by Lee Lanyoung, the high energy performance showed off breath taking football and acrobatic skills as well as wonderful dancing.

There’s a plot of sorts and audience participation – Dads beware – or at least brush up your keepie-uppie skills before going.

Great fun.

Watch – ed The Three Hagstanes

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Three Hagstanes

Robert – the Storyteller

Robert Howat’s Three Hagstanes for Tight-laced Theatre at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh on Sunday 22nd July was a delight. The production, written by Howat and performed by him and Jamie Monteath, mixed traditional storytelling with dramatic rendition.

The story, Howat told his audience in a post-show Q&A session, came to him after he stumbled over a field containing standing stones. He’d been enjoying a pre-stag, stag party when the group found these monuments and ‘hagstanes’ was the closest he could get to his Geordie landlady’s description of what they might be. They inspired a play about witches.

Scotland has an unwholesome record in the discovery and murder (try judicial execution, but I feel quite strongly about this issue too) of witches. Howat opts for the idea that there might have been witches, but were they evil? In his play the witches were protecting their world from the Devil by blocking up vents he mght use to escape. The knight who betrays them is caught by the mores of his time, which allowed him nothing less.

A simple set let Howat and Monteath roam freely. The small boys in the audience were entraced by the knight’s sword. The music both enhanced and paced the script. Howat’s story-telling skills were much to the fore and he has a fine vocal range enabling him to woo and surprise his audience by turn.

Alas, it was one day only, but Tight-laced bring another of his plays, Charlie and the ’45 to the same venue in November.

Work in Progress

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Work in Progress

Creatives always have a WIP, don’t they? Except that having told you all about the wonderful opportunity presented by Oran Mor/Channel 4, the brain has locked down.

Happens a lot and I have to wonder whether it’s a fear of success. Well, I’m not admitting to a fear of failure!

I spent the weekend at Penrith Newton Rigg Campus of the University of Cumbria where I was a delegate at the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s annual conference. Yep, I’m not waiting around to make my fortune from playwriting, but trying other fields too. Writing conferences are great for allowing you to mingle with the big names who produce and the big names who buy. It’s also a time-out-of-time when the brain can work in free-fall without the spectre of your usual responsibilities getting in the way.

Did I come back with an idea for 50 minutes of stage time featuring not more than three characters?

No!

However, being de-briefed by my husband on his weekend, I found the idea I need. At least I think I have.

Maybe!

Will keep you updated.

What am I watching? Now off to buy my ticket for Robert Howat and Tight-Laced’s production of the Three Hagstanes. 3pm at the Scottish Story-telling Centre, High Street Edinburgh, Sunday 22nd July. Myth and greed. Sounds just right for the current summer weather.

Are you Writing? Here’s an Incentive.

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Some of you will also receive the newsletter from Scottish Playwrights’ Studio which contains loads of useful information about things dramatic. Here’s one that was in this month’s edition:

“Oran Mor Comedy Drama Award Oran Mor and Channel 4 Applications: UK wide Deadline: 1 October 2012

Oran Mor is delighted to announce the launch of the Channel 4/Oran Mor Comedy Drama Award. The Award carries a prize of £5000 and is open to all writers resident in the UK. The winning entry will be selected by a panel of judges drawn from Oran Mor and Channel 4 and will be given its stage premier in March 2013 at A Play A Pie and A Pint during the Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

Scripts, in one act and no more than 50 minutes in length and using no more than 3 actors, should be submitted by email to April Chamberlain at aprilcha@gmail.com .Please include a cover sheet with your full contact details and agents details (if applicable). The closing date for entries is Monday 1st October 2012.”

 

 

Leith’s Hidden Treasure: The Final Version

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I promised in my earlier post to report back after I’d seen the final version of Laure Paterson’s: Leith’s Hidden Treasure.

The major surprise for me was the huge and delightful contribution made by four young actors and dancers from P6 of St Mary’s school. They were never far from proving the adage – Don’t appear with children or animals – as they sang skipping songs, practised the Highland fling, played peevers and tap danced.

Laure had drawn them effortlessly into the play and woven Janey Halliwell’s story into their childish gossip. Was it okay to include a child with a hole in her dress in their dancing display? It produced a work of great charm: just right to remember the local hospital by and to entertain an audience out to enjoy their local festival.

One of the problems of writing this kind of play, where the author has consulted widely and heard memories from a lot of people, is in finding a tight enough inner dramatic conflict. The contributors want to hear ‘their’ bit and in including all the ‘bits’ a certain dilution takes place.

Leith’s Hidden Treasure was an excellent production for its slot and Laure has the Genesis of a drama, another hidden treasure, should she decide to explore the lives of her nursing staff.

Run finished.