| A Guide and Look-back |
Theatre of Scotland |
| Playwrights, Critics, Government , Public Culture of Scotland , February 8, 2022 |
The National Theatre of Scotland was influential when the framers of the National Theatre of Wales came to thinking out their own design. The years passed. One thrives; the other did not endure. Scotland's national company performed twice in Wales; both are reviewed below. Productions in the summer of 2014, Scotland's year of independence referendum, are reviewed. The last reference to Scotland occurred in January 2025. It was headed “Wales and Scotland: The Gap Becomes a Gulf.” Productions, events, books on Scotland below: 03 February 2021: Wales and Elsewhere: Looking at the Gap "The audience numbers- freely given in the public domain- in the last reporting year are 48,063 in Scotland, 62,353 elsewhere in the United Kingdom and 30,779 internationally. “Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour” had a West End run under the aegis of Sonia Friedman Productions. It is a raucous, rude show. The National Theatre of Wales does not do rude and raucous." * * * * 03 July 2020: Response to Closure and Financial Devastation of Theatre "On June 22nd the Scottish Government’s advisory group on recovery from the Covid crisis announced a National Partnership for Culture." * * * * 24 August 2018: Gary McNair & Kieran Hurley “Square Go” "There is not enough comedy about across Wales. It is a pity because laughter is a common language." * * * * 21 August 2018: National Theatre of Scotland, Théâtre PÀP & Hôtel-Motel “First Snow/ La Première Neige” "Ever since the first years, when John Tiffany's soldiers stomped out of their Drill Hall and went around the world, the company has been not just of Scotland but also for Scotland." * * * * 19 August 2018: Thirty years of theatre: Joyce McMillan "Field of Dreams" “Nations define themselves most fully, most accurately and most impressively not when they are directly examining their own nationhood, but when they are using the stuff of their own language and culture to tackle the substantial issues of their time.” * * * * 18 August 2018: National Theatre of Scotland "The report is expressed in a lucid language. So Scotland's national theatre got £4.303M in the year 2015/2016 plus an additional £0.184M in touring grants. Government core funding for the five national companies in aggregate was 63%. 20% was earned in box office. 68% of turnover was spent on production, 8% on education, salaries were 6%." * * * * 21 June 2017: A L Kennedy “Brexit Shorts” “Chummy's first words are “Haw. Nightmare, eh? You and me, eyeball to eyeball. How very dare I. What’s next? Fisticuffs? Swearing? Fae me? Faraging swearing?” * * * * 23 August 2014: Traverse Theatre “Unfaithful” "Rachel O’Riordan’s direction brings a piercing visual clarity to Owen McCafferty’s new play. Rachel O’Riordan has elicited performances of brilliance." * * * * 05 August 2014: “Spoiling” & “the Pitiless Storm”: Independence Referendum Theatre “The author's interest is twofold. One is the assertion of Scotland's superiority in virtue and innocence. Scotland did not do empire, slavetrade, or settlement in Ireland. Poor good little Scotland was led astray by its big bad bully of a neighbour." * * * * 24 March 2014: David Greig “the Events” "The first element is the ambition, the scale of the risk...Secondly, “the Events” is formally innovative." * * * * 31 December 2013: Theatre Criticism in Scotland "What Scotland does have still is a professional theatre critic out there twice a week. r. The archive of Joyce McMillan’s writings on journalisted.com runs to eight hundred and five articles, an argued, lucid and broad single-source record of Scotland's theatre * * * * 20 November 2013: David Greig “the Events” “The Events” is big theatre on four counts; it is bold and ambitious in its subject, it is innovative in its form, crafted in its narrative arc, and complex and subtle in its treatment." * * * * 20 October 2013: Traverse Theatre & Wales Millennium Centre “I'm with the Band” "Gruff Wales cowers in a box sobbing. His plea to England is “I’ll do whatever you want. You have to look after me.” Near the close Wales and Ireland are sent into spasms in which they lose shirt and trousers. It is a deeply strange, masochistic image for Welsh theatre-makers to portray of Wales within the Union." * * * * 03 January 2013: Argument Erupts over Arts Council "The critique was stinging: “the organisation finds itself in the hands of a leadership which refers to the allocation of funds as the “boring bit” of its job.” The managers, ran the claim of Scotland’s artists, wanted to do “advocacy, social strategy and business development… demonstrably none of its business.” * * * * 20 January 2011: David Greig “Midsummer” "David Greig’s script is a song of love to his native Edinburgh. Cora Bissett plays hunched-shouldered hoodie Aidan- with the arrival of a football her shambling teenager is transformed and moves with balletic grace." * * * * 17 October 2010: Vanishing Point & Napoli Teatro Festival Italia “Interiors” "When the dead and the living meet on stage it does not necessarily have to be “Hamlet” or “the Turn of the Screw”. Vanishing Point’s totally original production, director Matthew Lenton’s conception is inspired by the 1895 play “Interior” of Symbolist playwright and later Nobel prize-winner Maurice Maeterlinck" * * * * 31 August 2010: D C Jackson “My Romantic History” "The writing contains sharp shards of pain from the lives of thirty-something singletons. D C Jackson’s writing probes insightfully at the way first love casts a long shadow in its wake." * * * * 04 September 2009: Bryony Lavery, Fuel & Sound and Fury “Kursk” "Kursk”, brilliantly set within a British Trafalgar Class submarine in 2000, also plunges the audience into darkness at times. We hear the voices of Russian sailors trapped in their air pocket." * * * * 23 June 2008: Vanishing Point & National Theatre of Scotland “Little Otik” “The stage, when revealed, in Kai Fisher’s set is layered with a covering of earth. A birch tree stands close to an isolated door. The giant projections that follow, by Finn Ross, include birds and butterflies, streams of fluttering sperm and ultrasound foetal images, to the accompaniment of Christopher Shutt's eclectic score." * * * * 09 June 2008 David Greig & Tag Theatre Company “Yellow Moon”Prize-Winning Action-Full Youth Theatre "There is no shortage of action. A moor of heather is set alight. There is a swim in an ice-cold loch, a break-in into a mansion, sexual exposure, a killing. “Yellow Moon” is portable theatre at its prime with the lights undimmed, three black chairs only for props, the audience on four sides." * * * * 21 May 2008: National Theatre of Scotland “Black Watch” “Black Watch” is blistering, confident, caustic and compassionate national theatre. * * * * 28 October 2007: Theatre Hebrides “The Callanish Stoned” "Stornoway-based Theatre Hebrides came to the first of two Welsh venues on their three-country tour between performances in Drumnadrochit and Letterkenny. The author is primarily a novelist and poet and it did show" * * * * 14 August 2007: David Greig at the Traverse “Damascus” "Scotland is taking drama places the other nations aren’t. Two years ago the prolific David Greig’s Brechtian “The American Pilot” had the pilot of the title landing in an unnamed Middle Eastern country, under foreign occupation and on the brink of civil war." * * * * 01 October 2001 Theatre in Scotland: the view in 2001 "What colleagues of mine in Wales often comment on is the perceived difference in attitudes of the two Arts Councils. We all tend to moan about the SAC, but they are, on the whole, supportive of the work being done, and there has certainly been nothing like the calamities that seem to have befallen the ACW in the last few years." |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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