Citizens Theatre, Glasgow 4 stars There’s something a little bit special going on in this latest collaboration between the Citizens Theatre Community Company and Scottish Opera. Inspired by and in part sourced from Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, this pocket-sized version may put its twenty-strong cast in period dress, but the references and themes are as twenty-first century as it gets. Tam is a happy-go-lucky kind of guy about to get hitched to Ann, but who is led astray into the Glasgow flesh-pots by a mysterious stranger with a gold credit card. From Byres Road to Sauchiehall Street, the full social mix of a city in motion is observed in all its glory, with Tam falling prey to hedonistic excess, rampant consumerism and the shallow narcissism of celebrity. This comes in the form of a bearded pop starlet called Lady Baba, while there’s nods too to Hello magazine, west end institution Oran Mor and a top flight emporium revelling in the name of Pradamark. The result of all this in Elly Goodman and Neil Packham’s production, devised with the company, and with a new score composed for a live quartet by Matthew Brown, is a playful mash-up of old and new material. While on one hand the company rise gamely to the complexities of Brown’s material, under conductor Chris Gray’s guidance they prove equally adept at tackling the chorus numbers from Stravinsky’s original via its libretto by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman. While there is much acting talent on offer, it is Jonathan Collins as Tam who anchors the show, although Annette Stewart’s Lady Baba steals things in a refreshingly accessible take on an old story that retains its dark heart. The Herald, July 2nd 2012 ends
When Ron Butlin saw a man who’d just asked him the time throw himself under a train on the Paris Metro, it was a turning point in how his 1987 novel, The Sound Of My Voice, would turn out. Twenty years on, Butlin’s tale of suburban family man Morris Magellan’s existential crisis and his subsequent slide into alcoholism is regarded as a lost classic. Prime material, then, for the very intimate stage adaptation which opens in the Citizens Theatre’s tiny Stalls Studio tonight. “I had this friend in London who was an alcoholic,” Butlin recalls. “He would go off to work in the civil service in the morning looking absolutely immaculate. Then at night we’d meet, and he’s get mega-blootered, then go home and continue drinking and end up in a really bad state. I remember staying over one night, and he’d emerge from his room looking immaculate again. There was this huge contrast between what was going on outside and what was going on inside.” We’re sitting in a café on Edinburgh’s south sid
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