The Scotsman 6 May 2022

The scene is a wedding. Tying the knot is theatre director Ben Occhipinti. His friend and colleague Elizabeth Newman has volunteered to lead the congregation in song. She has chosen one of her favourites: I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) by the Proclaimers. She gets the guests to sing the de-de-de-da lines as a call-and-response at the reception to see who can be the most joyful. She calls it a “joy-off”.

Not long after, Newman finds herself in a BBC Radio 4 studio where her fellow guests on Front Row are none other than Craig and Charlie Reid. She is there to talk about her outdoor staging of Gulliver’s Travels (co-directed with Occhipinti). They are promoting the new Proclaimers album, Angry Cyclist. [READ MORE]

By Mark Fisher

MARK FISHER is a freelance theatre critic and feature writer based in Edinburgh and has written about theatre in Scotland since the late-1980s. He is a theatre critic for The Guardian, a former editor of The List magazine and a frequent contributor to the Scotsman and other publications. He is the co-editor of the play anthology Made in Scotland (1995), and the author of The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide (2012) and How to Write About Theatre (2015) – all Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. He is also the editor of The XTC Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and Girls and What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book (both Mark Fisher Ltd).