theatreSCOTLAND

12 May 2009 The Guardian

The Ducky

By DC Jackson. Borderline Theatre review.

THIS play - DC Jackson's sequel to last year's The Wall - starts off light and breezy, charting the lives of a group of Ayrshire teenagers with a throwaway charm. It is neither adventurous nor deep, yet, in the middle of the second half, the play catches you unawares. Suddenly, you realise you care for these young people and their amplified sense of their own significance. Behind the rites-of-passage laughs, Jackson reveals a beating heart.

11 May 2009 Northings

The Ducky

By DC Jackson. Borderline Theatre review.

WE think nothing of feelgood pop songs and lightweight movie rom-coms, but the breezy piece of popular romantic theatre is a rarer beast. Playwright DC Jackson has no weighty statement to make and no inclination to challenge the theatrical status quo, but in The Ducky – a sequel to the equally delightful The Wall – he demonstrates his gift for boy-meets-girl comedy that is as funny as it is tender.

8 March 2008 The Guardian

The Wall

By Daniel Jackson. Borderline review.

IT seems they don't do subtext in Ayrshire. The teenagers in Daniel Jackson's gossamer-light rom-com cannot let a sentence go by without releasing an explosion of unsuppressed emotion. They accompany every moment of boy-meets-girl confusion, every foot-in-mouth misunderstanding, every clumsily expressed sexual urge with a pained gesture of adolescent turmoil. It is not subtle, but in Gregory Thompson's production for the Tron and Borderline it gets many a throwaway laugh.

Losing Louis by Borderline Theatre

26 September 2006 Northings

Losing Louis

By Simon Mendes Da Costa. Borderline review.

SIMON Mendes Da Costa is a young playwright who has quickly found favour with audiences in London. ‘Losing Louis’, only his second play, transferred from Hampstead Theatre to the West End after a sell-out run. A new production has just begun a three-month stint on Broadway. One critic called him "the kind of popular comic dramatist the West End has long been pining for".T hat's just the kind of writer favoured by Borderline, the Ayrshire company which prides itself on its popular touch, but faces an uncertain future now the Scottish Arts Council has withdrawn its funding.

Julie Austin in Spending Frank by Borderline Theatre Pic: Richard Campbell

17 March 2006 Northings

Spending Frank

By Alistair Hewitt. Borderline review.

DOUGLAS Maxwell's latest comedy, ‘Melody’, is about a woman dealing with pangs of guilt after she snatched – and later returned – a baby from its real mother. It opened in Edinburgh the day before the Glasgow opening of Alistair Hewitt's ‘Spending Frank’, a comedy about a woman dealing with pangs of guilt after she snatched – and later returned – a baby from its real mother.

13 September 2005 Northings

Accidental Death of an Anarchist

By Dario Fo. Borderline review.

BORDERLINE Theatre has a long and honourable history with the plays of Dario Fo. In 1985, the left-wing Italian farceur even attended the company's production of ‘Trumpets and Raspberries’, starring Andy Gray, and yelled his approval in one word: "Carnivale!"

February 2005 Northings

Passing Places

By Stephen Greenhorn. Borderline review.

PASSING Places is one of the funniest Scottish plays of the past decade. Not that you’d know it from this production. Instead of taking us on a rip-roaring ride through the Scottish landscape, director Anna Newell drags us on an are-we-nearly-there-yet hike.

20 September 2004 The Guardian

Good Things

By Liz Lochhead. Borderline review.

YOU never see a fairy tale heroine older than her teens, but in Good Things, playwright Liz Lochhead has fashioned a Cinderella for fortysomethings. The woman destined for the swanky red shoes is 48-year-old Susan Love (Annette Staines), dumped by her husband for a girl half her age and left doing voluntary work in a charity shop, hoping speed-dating will sort her out.

4 October 2004 Northings

Good Things

By Liz Lochhead. Borderline review.

GOOD things come to those who wait, and for divorcee Susan Love romance is a long time coming. We usually talk about teenagers being at a difficult age, but what could be more difficult than for a woman in her late-40s to get back into the dating game after decades of marriage?

11 February 2004 Northings

Dead Funny

By Terry Johnson. Borderline review.

THIS is what I was going to say: I was going to say that Terry Johnson’s comedy is showing its age. That despite premiering only a decade ago, it is already looking anachronistic in its focus on dead British comedians – the likes of Frankie Howerd, Benny Hill, and Morecambe and Wise. I was going to say that this production by Borderline Theatre Company, well acted though it is, seems out of step with the times in a way that the last Scottish production did not – and that was at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum as recently as 1997.

theatreSCOTLAND © Mark Fisher 2009