CATS Awards

The CATS awards will soon be upon us, with a shortlist announced soon – on May 16th.    (They have a spectacularly horrible website with sideways scrolling required – yuck! -  but now fixed for IE users like me – thanks Mark!)

But I wonder what they will choose.    And I also wonder if blogs covering theatre in Scotland should get a say.   I’ll bet that Statler and Waldorf at View from the Stalls  will have seen the shortlisted productions.

Be Near Me – Perth Theatre

Be Near Me, a  joint production between the National Theatre of Scotland and the Donmar Warehouse reached Perth last week.

Ian McDiarmid adapted this from Andrew O’ Hagan’s book, and he also starred in this disturbing piece.     The story, set in a sectarian west coast community is about Father David Anderton, a very English, Catholic priest, fond of wine, classical music …….. and the odd young boy.

Anderton, for ever scarred by the death of a close friend, Conor, in a car crash while they were at University in Oxford, sought refuge in the Church.    A good administrator, but poor priest, he was taken on reluctantly by the Glasgow Bishop only because he was intelligent, and they were short of priests.    In what was a rather improbable series of errors of judgement, he got a little too friendly with a group of difficult teenagers, including 15 year old  Mark.    Mark  ended up at the rectory, and after drink and drugs were taken, Anderton planted a kiss on the boy’s lips.   

The wider community was well represented by the rest of the actors, mostly present onstage throughout.   In a strong cast, Blythe Duff gave was particularly outstanding as Mrs Poole, Anderton’s housekeeper.    Collette O’Neill played Anderton’s mother – bright, old and wise, and still churning out her books with plenty of sex included.    There was some excellent singing, which under John Tiffany’s direction, added much to the drama.

But ultimately, this was not a comfortable play.    The very English, camp Catholic priest was very much at odds with Ayrshire working class community.      Anderton  reminded me of the English Colonel in Tunes of Glory.   And the sectarianism was present from the old down to the young.   Anderton held very different views to his peers, which we saw demonstrated in a wonderful dinner party scene.

In the end, Anderton was a lost man – he lost his job and had to do community service, but he lost his way in life:   he was challenged about what he had achieved in his church career not only by the young teenagers, but by his agnostic mother.     Ian McDiarmid gave a very convincing performance, even if what we were being asked to believe was less so at times.

And nice to see Perth Theatre very busy, and to see a good sprinkling of other actors and a director in the audience, which is always a good sign.

Farming and Stones

The Blog has been neglected recently because I have been on a tractor for days and days and days.      Farm spring work.  

Ploughing and Seagulls

Ploughing, power harrowing, spreading fertilizer, lifting stones and rolling.      A neighbour comes in with his seeder to sow barley and oats.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have had quite a crop of stones this year – all this off one field …….. now stored for future use, as you can see.

Lots of Stones

Ya beauty! Big Stone

This stone was just peeking above the surface.   I tried to rock it – it was not moving.   I dug round it with a spade and realised that it needed serious lifting gear.

The stone is now safely in the wood where it won’t be in anyone’s way ever again.   

Fresh Air for Babies

My siblings and I were put outside as  babies  in the pram to sleep, and we put our own children outside likewise, well wrapped up.     They would wake up with rosy cheeks from the fresh air and often lie for ages looking up at tree branches and leaves moving in the breeze.      Don’t people do this any more?

We had a lady with a 6 month old staying along the road for the past three months.    The child was taken from the house to the car, to the supermarket each day, and then straight back again.    I never even saw them out for a walk, which was a shame as they had a small dog which would have benefitted from a little exercise, and the lawns would have been a little cleaner.    It is such a waste – this is such a lovely part of the world to be out and about in.

Costa: 7 out of 10 – who are they kidding?

There is a sign currently on display at Costa coffee shops saying that 7 out of 10 Coffee Lovers Prefer Costa.        Well, not me.   I am one of the 3 in 10 who go out of my way to avoid it, because I just don’t like their coffee.    I can live with that.

But there are situations when the only shop available is a Costa, and the choice is either to put up with it, or go without.   So, looking for a quick coffee and pain aux raisin in Edinburgh Airport to fill a gap before my flight was called, Costa was the nearest to the gate, and as time was short, breakfast was bought here.    The coffee was, as expected,  not great, but the pain aux raisin would have won prizes for its sheer nastiness.    Crispy it was not – bendy and  very rubbery it most certainly was.      Just a flabby disc of sheer foulness.

Why does it have to be like this?    It was 8.00 am – breakfast time for many people (except the group of Scots already hungrily downing pints of beer at the bar, who were clearly running to their own timetable) so there should have been a quick turnover of fresh breakfast items.    I was sold yesterday’s produce.

So 0/10 for Costa.    

I prefer Cafe Nero any day.

Scotrail Muffins – First Class!

Travelling back from a haary Arbroath to a sunny Perth this afternoon on the train.  

The tea trolley came round, and my companion ordered a tea.   She rather fancied one of the muffins as well, but was not allowed to buy one.    “They are for the First Class passengers only”.    What’s that all about then?

I suggested to the cheerful trolley man that they don’t display them for the likes of us, and he said that this had been brought up, but no-one listens.

As we got nearer Perth, the trolley came back along (the train only had three carriages, and a tiny First Class bit), with its pile of muffins still unsold.    I’d be pretty cross if they get to Glasgow and unsold muffins have to be binned because they are stale.

My companion had shortbread instead.

You could not make it up, really.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf – Dundee Rep.

Edward Albee’s strange thrilling play about destructive mind games fuelled by industrial amounts of drink is given an absolutely stunning production at Dundee Rep.

Firstly, the set, designed by Phil Whitcomb extended into the space occupied by the first four rows of the stalls, and in an already very intimate theatre, we were effectively sitting right in Martha and George’s messy living room, which itself was set on a sea of broken glass.       Outside, the rain poured, and dripped off the veranda roof at the back of the set.      A studio space, if you like, allowing the play to build pressure as Martha and George raged at eachother and bullied their guests.

Irene Macdougall and Robert Patterson as Martha and George. Photo Dundee Rep

Irene Macdougall as Martha, daughter of the college principal, and Robert Patterson as weak academic George gave just amazing performances, unravelling their complicated lives and playing ‘get the guests’ as the drink took hold.   

Dundee Rep should be congratulated on casting two newcomers as the young couple Honey and Nick.    Barely out of college, Alan Burgon and Gemma McElhinney also gave first-rate performances of which to be especially proud.  

Director James Brinning kept the action  going and wound up the intensity so that the pace never flagged at all during the three hours of play (+intervals).     The music by Ivan Stott added atmosphere, and I loved the dance to Thelonious Monk’s Well You Needn’t .   By the end, as dawn finally broke, and calm descended, actors and audience alike had been through a wringer of a journey.      It is perhaps unfair to single out anyone from such a great ensemble, but Robert Patterson as George was simply outstanding – not in control of his family, burnt out in his career, but finally manipulating the action to his own ends.     His rage was genuinely dangerous and alarming.

Catch it if you get the chance – on until 21st March.   Scottish theatre at its best.

Oh ……..  last time we saw this play at Dundee, a certain young David Tennant was playing Nick.

Red Nose BBC Coverage

Straight off, I like Red Nose Day – people doing something funny for money and raising funds for good causes.    It captures the imagination of the UK, and many ordinary people as well as celebrities do daft things.     It is a genuinely laudable initiative, and many people benefit from the considerable sums raised every two years here as well as abroad.

I tuned into BBC post watershed and watched the coverage.   I was hoping to be entertained, but in fact was assaulted (and there is no other word for it) by weepy presenters showing footage  of children actually dying and their coffins being put into the ground.    It was genuinely shocking, and perhaps that was the point.    I just felt very unprepared for, and very uncomfortable with the emotional blackmail.     I was being backed into a corner, and not entirely convinced by the explanations given that money would solve the huge problems we were being asked to get our heads around.     Aid solutions are very much more complicated, and I needed to know more detail.  

I can’t say I am happy about feeling this way, but I don’t think I will be the only one .    I just feel very used as a viewer.

Five:15 (2009) Scottish Opera, Oran Mor.

Scottish Opera has built on last year’s Five:15  by commissioning five more new 15 minute operas from composers and writers.

A 15 minute opera is a very strange task to pull off:   in writers’ terms, it might be seen as a short story, but in fact the text has to be minimal and pared down to fit in with this art form.    Too wordy simply does not work.    And composing a 15 minute opera must be no less odd – most chamber operas will last for at least 40 minutes, which is enough for composers to get their teeth into the piece.     So, given these demanding artistic constraints, we were in fact well entertained in Glasgow at the weekend.

Richard Rowe, Philip Gault. Photo, Richard Campbell

We started with The Lightning-Rod Man, composed by Martin Dixon and written by Amy Parker from a Herman Melville Story.      A strange tale asking us, through the stars and stripes suited Commentator Richard Rowe, to choose to believe in God or science.     Amazing what you can do with one chair and a big stick.   

Happy Story composed by David Fennessy and co-written with Nicholas Bone (who also directed) was about a man obsessed with flight.     This was perhaps the weakest offering, as the story, though amusing, was a bit  thin.    

However, White, composed by Gareth Williams and written by Margaret McCarthy took us into the serious world of hospitals and loss.    A foreign cleaner, superbly sung by Emma Carrington, emptied the bins and changed the flowers in a very ill patient’s room.     As time passed, she learnt more of the local language, and was able to have a conversation about the hopefulness and promise of the Spring with the ill lady.    However, the ailing patient sparked off the cleaner’s own memories of loss.    The intense minimal and moving score and harsh strip lighting set this opera apart from the others – just as Gareth Williams’ King’s Conjecture did last year.    It all came together perfectly.

I was especially looking forward to Zinnie Harris’ opera, as I have seen her plays Further than the Furthest Thing and Fall.    She has been quoted as only being able to write about dark things, so it was no surprise that she chose Death of a Scientist – about the last moments of David Kelly, the government scientist who committed suicide over the WMD in Iraq report.   I think that this was easily the best libretto of the evening, and there was so much detail in so few words – Kelly was so softly spoken that they had to turn off the air conditioning to hear him speak, and later on we meet  the two women ‘harpies of war’ who are set to plunder his dead body for bits to take to the battlefields of Basra:   “…. his teeth to bite children..”      Serious stuff, and effective music from John Harris.    Great performances all round, but especially from Richard Rowe as Kelly, who was clearly overwhelmed by the end.

Mary O'Sullivan. NOT a photo album. Photo, Richard Campbell

And finally, Remembrance Day from composer Stuart MacRae and writer Louise Welsh was a horror story where 17 year old Lyn cleaned her elderly neighbour’s house.    She put on a record, and opened what she thought was a photo album.     What she found in the pages was shocking.    Good story.

Like all new writing, some worked well, and  some worked less well.    The singers were all excellent, dealing with incredibly difficult and unfamiliar music, and they had to act well too.    There is something intensely exciting about hearing opera singers with big voices in a small intimate space.    The chamber orchestra conducted throughout by Derek Clark was also on good form.

Well worth catching.    It is repeated at the Hub in Edinburgh on the 7th and 8th March.     I do wonder if this is bringing in new audience to opera – I did recognise quite a few faces from the audience down the road at Theatre Royal.

Shun-kin – Barbican – London

Photo: Tsukasa Aoki

We were looking for something to go and see during a recent visit to London, and Theatre de Complicite caught our eye.    We have been big fans of Complicite and Simon McBurney ever since they visited Dundee and performed Street of Crocodiles.    They don’t do many performances, but what they do is different and special.

So a play completely in Japanese seemed pretty different from your usual West End show, and we booked to see Shun-kin.

The story is based on two 1933 writings from Japanese author Jun’ichiro Tanizaki:   A Portrait of Shunkin and In Praise of Shadows.     Shunkin was a blind female  player and teacher of a Japanese stringed instrument called the shamisen.   She was stunningly beautiful.    She lived with her servant Sasuke, who became her pupil and then her lover in a complicated often sado-masochistic relationship.     A story then about devotion, expect, as McBurney says, in Japan it is sometimes hard to know what you are looking at.

Shunkin was a petulant child, getting her own way, but her servant Sasuke stayed loyal to her, despite her being unspeakably cruel.    There were children, but these were taken away and adopted – Sasuke never saw them again.    One day, a pupil deliberately burnt Shunkin’s face, causing horrible disfigurement, and Shunkin wrapped up her head in a bandage, determined that Sasuke should not see her in her ugliness.     But Sasuke made a huge sacrifice so that he might stay with Shunkin, and fixed it so that he could never see her again.    With a needle from the sewing room.     A poor man who threw away so much to stay loyal.     Why did he do that?

Perhaps a clue lies in the second text which praises the beauty of darkness and shadow.    The set was very dark, with much use of candlelight, and this was a very dark haunting tale, so beautifully told by Complicite.     McBurney spread the story across the generations, so at the beginning, an old man wandered onto the set with a long stick and explained all about it, and about the graves of Shunkin and Sasuke who lived in the mid 19th century.           The action took place back then, but told through an actress reading the book in a Tokyo radio studio for modern-day transmission.    “Mushi Mushi” she said into her mobile phone to her on/off lover between takes.

And the stagecraft from Complicite was just awesome using movement, sound and video projection seamlessly.    Shunkin’s pet lark was taken out of its box – a flapping bit of paper, then a flock of flapping bits of paper by the actors, and then the video projection took over and the flapping bits of paper became birds flying up and up and across the stage.   Poles became swaying branches.     But the coup de theatre was that Shunkin was portrayed first as a child puppet, then an adult puppet – wonderful work by Blind Summit Theatre – but then morphing into a real actor later on – still with a puppet mask, still moved by puppeteers.       The sound-scape and effects  from Gareth Fry – including the now trademark Complicite effect of a soundtrack taking over from an actor speaking completely seamlessly – was a big integral part.   Fry has worked on most Complicite productions, but also did the sound for Black Watch.

And as a bonus, we got a surprise appearance from McBurney himself:    the play started, and the old man came in and explained in Japenese about his stick, and then introduced another man with a big book.     But the promised supertitles failed to start, and the stage manager had to stop the action, and then McBurney came bouncing on to explain that we really needed them – nice to see him there.

I found the action on stage so mesmeric, that it was a struggle to look away and read the very wordy surtitles at either side of the stage.     In opera, there are far fewer words, making surtitle reading much easier, but this was quite a struggle as it was so text based.

But we really enjoyed this very different evening at the theatre.    Shun-kin is transfering back to Tokyo in March.