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Running on the Cracks
Adapted from the Julia Donaldson novel by Andy Arnold. A Tron/Pilot review.
YOU couldn't fault this adaptation of Julia Donaldson's novel for being short of themes. In 90 minutes, it ticks off bereavement, child abuse, missing people, drug addiction, mental illness, multiculturalism and the search for identity. Throw in a cat-and-mouse chase across the country, and you have the kind of sensationalist narrative that plays well to the target teenage audience.
Aganeza Scrooge
By Johnny McKnight. A Tron Theatre review.
WHEN Charles Dickens conceived the character of Ebenezer Scrooge, it is unlikely that he had in mind a large woman in a spangly leotard, bejewelled shoulder pads and curly black wig. But in Johnny McKnight's raucous revision of A Christmas Carol, the writer, director and star makes a convincing case for Scrooge as Dame. As an avaricious money-lender and sole proprietor of Marley & Me, this Aganeza Scrooge has survived the loadsamoney era to become the epitome of bah-humbug misanthropy. Selfish and merciless, she spends much of the show chatting up terrified audience members. Sharp-tongued, waspish and given to ad-libbing, she is also very funny.
Plume
By JC Marshall. A Tron Theatre review.
THE birds and the bees in JC Marshall's timely play signify not sex but death. In a poetic flourish, she pictures the victims of a mid-air terrorist atrocity being accompanied by an array of exotic birds. Down on the ground, meanwhile, a primary school pupil with a fatal allergy to stings deliberately grabs hold of a bee.
Crazy Gary's Mobile Disco
By Gary Owen. A Tron Theatre review.
THERE used to be an argument that a play couldn't be called feminist – even one with an all-female cast – if its characters' lives were defined by men. Gary Owen's three-hander from 2001 offers the opposite scenario. It is about three men in a Welsh town whose lives are defined by women.
1A Slow Air
By David Harrower. A Tron Theatre review.
IN his hits Knives in Hens and Blackbird, David Harrower stripped away the extraneous details to leave characters who could be from anywhere. His latest play isn't like that. Although estranged siblings Morna and Athol's dilemma is universal, their story's particulars are not.
Poll attacks: Election specials hit Scottish theatres
Blog about election plays. A Traverse Theatre/Tron Theatre blog/
FOR anyone interested in theatre and politics – and the relationship between the two – there was a fascinating juxtaposition of shows in Glasgow and Edinburgh this week. Kicking off the polemical Mayfesto programme at the Tron in Glasgow, It's a Dead Liberty reunited the old musically minded lefties of Wildcat and 7:84 theatre companies – both long since defunct – for a blues-inflected socialist cabaret.
Staircase
By Charles Dyer. A Tron Theatre review.
LOOK on Amazon and you'll find a poster for sale
The Maids
By Jean Genet. A Tron/Glasgay theatre review.
IT is a particularly sour pair of ugly sisters who primp and preen around their mistress's boudoir in this all-male staging of the Jean Genet
Sea and Land and Sky
By Abigail Docherty. A Tron Theatre review.
ABIGAIL Docherty's play about nurses in the first world war is light on plot and heavy on reflection. At its best, it captures something of the carnage of Sarah Kane's Blasted and the desolation of Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children. Its strength is in the strange, hallucinatory air that undercuts the period realism, although it is a quality that alienates as much as it intrigues.
Dirty Paradise
By Leann O'Kasi. A Tron Theatre review.
IT has the hallmarks of a run-of-the-mill one-woman show. Inspired by a Gabriel Garca Mrquez story? Check. Woman going on a voyage of self-discovery? Check. Flashbacks to troubled adolescence? Check. But there is something else going on in this 75-minute monologue, and it's not just the vibrant performance by writer Leann O'Kasi.
Valhalla!
By Paul Rudnick. A Tron Theatre review.
THE coalition government has just brought in Niall Ferguson to jazz up the school history curriculum. Despite the Harvard academic's talk of war games and television in the classroom, however, it is by no means certain he would give the thumbs-up to the retelling of history in Paul Rudnick's Valhalla! First seen in 2004, this boisterous American comedy filters the story of Ludwig II, the 19th-century king of Bavaria, through a gauze of such outrageous camp that Ð at least in Andy Arnold's exuberant production Ð it comes across more like a video by Adam and the Ants than a session with AJP Taylor.
Address Unknown
By Frank Dunlop adapted from Kressmann Taylor. A Tron Theatre review.
OF ALL the traumas associated with the Second World War, one of the hardest to come to terms with is how people of good character could have thrown their support behind Hitler. Their betrayal produced, on a very big scale, the kind of shock caused by a lover who chooses a new partner; to the rejected party, it is as if there has been an inexplicable personality change. In the case of Germany, it is so difficult to explain that, over 60 years later, we are still trying to process it.
A Most Civil Arrangement/Jordan
By Colin Hough, and Moira Buffini and Anna Reynolds. A Tron Theatre review.
AFTER blasting off last week with incendiary visions of Iraq and Palestine, the Tron's new politically minded season, Mayfesto, looks closer to home. The two one-woman shows at the Changing Room consider same-sex marriage and domestic violence a nd, if neither quite upturns our preconceptions, both do a valuable job at giving a voice to the alienated.
From the West Bank
By David Greig and Franca Rame. A Tron Theatre review.
After blanket coverage of the intricacies of the British political system, how refreshing to be reminded of the wider world. And how invigorating, in this opening salvo of Mayfesto, a two-week programme of politically inspired drama, to see it done so consummately.
The City
By Martin Crimp. A Tron Theatre production
MARTIN Crimp's 2008 play is defined by political movements way beyond the suburban garden of Chris and Clair. No exchange between this professional couple is complete without some allusion to torture, warfare and abuse. The strain on their relationship – which goes from frosty to frigid in the taut performances of Ronnie Simon and Selina Boyack – is a consequence of a social order in which brute power is everything.
The Government Inspector
By Nikolai Gogol. A Tron Theatre/Communicado review.
THE gag about Barclays bank is not strictly necessary. The modern relevance of Nikolai Gogol's small-town satire has hit us long before the actor's off-the-cuff quip about bankers' bonuses. Such is the atmosphere of venality in Gerry Mulgrew's hilarious Communicado production that, despite the period setting, we are never far away from financial profiteers and expense-fiddling MPs.
18 February 2010 Northings
The Government Inspector
By Nikolai Gogol. A Tron Theatre/Communicado review.
"IT takes a lot of jockeys to run a one-horse town," says Andy Clark, playing Ivan Khlestakov, the man mistaken for a powerful St Petersburg official in Nikolai Gogol's hilarious satire. To cover up their corrupt behaviour, the locals have been only too willing to pay him off with cash bribes. No mean opportunist himself, Khlestakov has accepted their favours with enthusiasm.
Ya Beauty and the Beast
By Gordon Dougall and Fetcher Mathers. A Tron Theatre review.
THERE was a time when you could attribute the Tron panto's usual blend of the traditional and the ironic to the postmodern sensibilities of writers Fletcher Mathers and Gordon Dougall. But today, the word "postmodern" no longer does its panto justice. It's as if it has been sucked into a black hole, thrown out the other side, and reconfigured in its own eccentric universe. Panto has eaten itself and Ya Beauty and the Beast is the result.
That Face
By Polly Stenham. A Tron Theatre review.
SOMEONE once said the most alarming thing about Trainspotting was the thought that Begbie could be prowling the streets in real life. The same is true of Martha in That Face, a character who, like her namesake in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, is recklessly charismatic, hopelessly drunk and frighteningly believable.
Cooking with Elvis
By Lee Hall. A Tron Theatre review.
WHEN Newcastle's Live Theatre presented Lee Hall's black comedy a decade ago, it did so with such a surfeit of charm that you almost didn't notice its taboo-busting excess. Here was a play whose pivotal character was a quadriplegic with head trauma and yet, despite scenes of under-age sex, man-on-man hand-jobs and cannibalism – not to mention a great bestiality joke – it remained giddily funny and surprisingly innocent.
Bliss/Mud
By Olivier Choinière and Maria Irene Fornes. Tron Theatre review.
IT is billed as "Tron Stripped" but, whatever the budget limitations, there is nothing low-rent about the intensity of this north American double bill. Seen individually, Bliss and Mud would pack a powerful punch; together, these bleak studies of the dispossessed are almost overwhelming.
Defender of the Faith
By Stuart Carolan. Tron Theatre review.
THE first defender of the faith was Sir Thomas More. [CORRECTION: Henry VIII was given that title] Unwilling to sign up to Henry VIII's Protestant church, he was beheaded. For his commitment to Catholicism, he was made a saint. Fast-forward 450 years to Stuart Carolan's play
Mother Bruce
By Gordon Dougall and Fletcher Mathers. Tron Theatre review.
TO say this year's Tron panto is conventional would be misleading. Any version of Mother Goose that, instead of a bird, features an Australian spider could hardly be called run-of-the-mill. And only at the Tron would you find a scene in which the cast of The Wizard of Oz at the nearby Citizens (or are they from The Wizard of Never Woz at the Pavilion?) alight at the wrong stop on the panto express and get caught up in the story. That's before the principal boy from Aladdin at the Edinburgh King's starts rubbing her lamp.
Suddenly Last Summer/Like the Rain
By Tennessee Williams. Tron Theatre review.
THERE is every reason to be impressed by the British Film Institute's 14-film Tennessee Williams retrospective coming up in London, but that shouldn't eclipse the achievement of the Tron. Andy Arnold's company is ticking off five of the playwright's shorter works on a single evening. If, after that, you still want more, you can follow a Williams strand in the citywide Glasgay! festival.
Six Acts of Love
By Ioanna Anderson. Tron Theatre review.
KATHERINE is a woman in need of a story. For much of the time in Ioanna Anderson's gentle comedy, though, you don't notice her dilemma because the fiftysomething Dublin mother of four seems to be surrounded by stories. There is the story of her husband Tom, who has run off with a young artist and started a new family; the stories of her grown-up sons and the lives they are forging for themselves; and the endless torrent of stories told by her mother Dorothy, desperately hanging on to her memories as dementia sets in.
The Drawer Boy
By Michael Healey. Tron Theatre review.
ANDY Arnold begins his artistic directorship of the Tron where he left off in his old job - with stories. His swansong at Glasgow's Arches was a production of Tom Murphy's Bailegangaire in which two daughters crave the completion of their mother's favourite story so they can achieve resolution in their own lives. Now Arnold turns to Canadian writer Michael Healey's The Drawer Boy, a warm-hearted well-made play also about the way stories give us self-definition.
The Wasp Factory
By Malcolm Sutherland. Tron Theatre review.
THE wanton destruction of rabbits; the murder of three children; maggots beneath the metal plate of a patient's head. Such is the shocking territory of Iain Banks's 1984 debut novel, and is the reason it has become cult reading.
The Wall
By Daniel Jackson. Tron Theatre 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.
Antigone
Tron Theatre review.
YOU know you are watching a good production of a classical tragedy when you find yourself hoping it will all end happily. That is the case in David Levin's stripped-back staging of the Sophocles play, in which Antigone and her fiancee Haemon seem to have a fighting chance of persuading King Creon to allow the burial of her brother Polyneices instead of leaving the corpse to the flies. Played by the youthful Hannah Donaldson and David Ashwood, the couple are no match in authority for Jimmy Yuill's king, Haemon's father. Yet with right on their side, they let us imagine they can beat the odds.
The Patriot
By Grae Cleugh. Tron Theatre review.
YOU'D imagine it would be a bit of a laugh for a playwright who wanted to satirise contemporary politics to hijack some creaky old theatrical form. The prewar well-made play, for example, would be ripe for parody. While we were chuckling at the obviousness of, say, the cliche of the wife who puts her life on hold for her husband's parliamentary career, the writer could deliver his broadsides against today's world of political compromise, expediency and spin.
Wullie Whittington
by Fletcher Mathers and Gordon Dougall. Tron Theatre review.
THE big question was how the Tron panto, that silliest and most self-referential of institutions, would survive in the absence of writer Forbes Masson, who has opted out to concentrate on his acting career. I'm pleased to report the Masson-esque formula - if formula isn't too strong a word for such anarchic proceedings - is thriving in a show of cartoon-like boldness and energy.
The Tempest
by William Shakespeare. Tron Theatre review.
THERE are many ideas washed up with the storm in Paddy Cunneen's staging of Shakespeare's island fantasy, but too few of them take root. Consider, for example, the bold set by Jonathan Fensom: a ship's container beached on a pile of tyres and stones, cracking open to free the passengers and - impressively - a grand piano. It is an image that suggests today's world of illegal immigrants, but nothing in the production follows the thought through.
Weans in the Wood
By Forbes Masson. Tron Theatre review.
THERE'S always a suspicion when you're watching one of Forbes Masson's highly enjoyable pantos that the adults in the audience are having a better time than the kids. Masson delights in subverting the panto form and is as likely to deliver a gag about a gag as the gag itself.
Ubu the King
By David Greig. Tron Theatre review.
WHEN Dominic Hill's arresting staging of Alfred Jarry's scatological classic reaches London at the end of November, it will be the final installment of the Young Genius season, a joint Barbican/Young Vic venture in celebration of those artists, such as Jarry, Robert Lepage and Christopher Marlowe, for whom inspiration struck early. Hill's own distinctive genius, however, has led him to place this "Ubu the King" not in a world of vigorous youth but in the altogether more doddery setting of a retirement home.
Pyrenees
By David Greig. Tron Theatre review.
THEATRE is like church: you go there to know yourself better. That's an idea that playwright David Greig takes literally. His central character - known only as the Man, although he could be a Keith - doesn't know himself at all. He has lost his memory after a mystery accident in deep snow on a mountain pass.
Aladdie
By Forbes Masson. Tron Theatre review.
AUDIENCES in London enjoying Forbes Masson as Horatio in the RSC's Hamlet can have little idea that the same man is responsible for quite the silliest pantomime in Scotland. Deliriously entertaining, his 21st-century reworking of Aladdin has an unbeatable joke-per-line ratio, excellent original songs and a small cast who enjoy the daft romp as much as the audience. Shakespeare it is not.
The Wonderful World of Dissocia
By Anthony Neilson. Tron Theatre review.
EISENSTEIN'S theory of montage is based on the idea that when presented with two unrelated images, the human brain will make a connection and find a meaning. This is a filmic concept, but it's the best way to get to grips with Anthony Neilson's brilliant and troubling new drama. I know of no other play where the meaning is contained neither in the first act nor in the second, but in the juxtaposition of the two. In this, it is as radical as anything we've seen in this year's festival.
theatreSCOTLAND © Mark Fisher 2009–2013
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