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Myra Mcfadden - An Obituary

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Michael Caton Jo
Recent posts

The Tailor of Inverness

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh Five stars   The world has been turned upside down several times over in the sixteen years since Matthew Zajac first performed his remarkable solo work in honour of his Polish/Ukrainian father who settled for the quiet life of the Highlands following the turmoil of the Second World War. A decade and a half on, and after more than 300 performances across the globe, the acquired baggage of Ben Harrison’s production for Zajac’s Dogstar company has gained a vital currency.    Following a sold out four week season in London, it is serendipitous that Zajac’s show arrives in Edinburgh for a brief run the week of Polish Independence Day. With Russia’s assault on Ukraine ongoing, Zajac’s play may be a deeply personal work, but as he embarks on a pilgrimage in search of his own roots, it becomes a hymn to much bigger histories. As illustrated on the map projected behind him on Ali Maclaurin’s set, those histories may have shaped the world, but they also fractured fami

101 Dalmatians The Musical

King’s Theatre, Glasgow Three stars   Someone had clearly let the dogs out before Wednesday night’s delayed curtain up of this new canine musical. Not that the young audience seemed to mind once things eventually got going after the runaway hounds had presumably been rounded up.    First on the scene was Pongo, the abandoned mutt whose adoption by puppy loving Danielle takes them on a walk in the park, where they become entangled with fellow pedigree Perdi and her human, Tom. From here this perfectly matched happy family embark on an adventure that sees them almost lost to the high fashion ambitions of Cruella de Vil. When dogs and cats combine forces, however, they knock spots off her.    Drawn from an original stage adaptation by Edinburgh based playwright Zinnie Harris, the show’s book by Glasgow panto legend Johnny McKnight with songs by Douglas Hodge look to Dodie Smith’s 1956 children’s novel rather than the 1961 Disney animated feature or its 1996 John Hughes scripted live actio

pass shadow, whisper shade

A collegiate approach prevails over this group show of six graduates from Collective’s 2024 Satellite Programme of emerging artists. Taking its title from an Irish proverb that loosely translates as ‘people live in each other’s shadows', pass shadow, whisper shade is disparate in approach, with shared themes of personal history throughout. Tellingly, almost all artists make reference to their parents, grandparents or older ancestors.     Emelia Kerr Beale draws inspiration from her father’s now demolished factory with a large scale grid of graphite drawings of ‘clock’ patterns, parts of a mechanical knitting machine and an industrial soundscape by Clara Hancock that sounds like a factory sampled.    Hannan Jones’ looped 16mm based moving image piece, Hiraeth: Pandy Lane (2024) looks to Jones’ grandfather’s attempts to buy a suit in a piece that resembles a 1970s folk horror public information film.    There is folk horror too in GASTROMANCY (2024), Katherine Fay Allan’s digital fil

Jennie Lee: Tomorrow is a New Day

Lochgelly Centre Three stars If ever a strong political voice for the arts was needed, it is now. The fact that there isn’t currently one emanating from either Holyrood or Westminster brings shame on both Houses. What better time, then, to be reminded of Jennie Lee, the Fife firebrand who became the first ever Minister for the Arts, and who founded the Open University, championing education for all.    Lee had quite a life before such epoch making activity, as is brought home in Matthew Knights’ epic dramatic biography, which premiered at the weekend a stone’s throw from his subject’s birthplace 120 years ago. Coming at a time when arts buildings are fighting to survive, it is telling too that Knights’ play opened in a venue that might not have existed without Lee’s vision.    Knight sets out his store in Emma Lynne Harley’s production for the Angus based Knights Theatre in the variety theatre and hotel where Lee grew up, as the show’s three actors raid the dressing up box to tell her

Blue Now

Tramway, Glasgow Four stars   Sound and Vision are the heart of director Neil Bartlett’s theatrical reimagining of Derek Jarman’s final film, completed four months before his death from an AIDS related illness in 1994. Featuring an Yves Klein hued blue screen for the film’s full 74-minute duration, Blue features a collage of voices speaking excerpts from Jarman’s diary as he gradually lost his sight.    As Jarman ruminated on friends and lovers lost to what had been demonised as ‘the gay plague’, this opened up a bigger picture of a world that had been decimated. This was offset across several sections by a more impressionistic narrative.   Thirty years on, Bartlett brings a new quartet of voices to recount what has now become a (self) portrait of a major moment in late twentieth century social and political history. More than that, as the cast of Travis Alabanza, Joelle Taylor, Jay Bernard and Russell Tovey line up on stools beneath the screen, it becomes a rhapsody to a time and a pl

Only Fools and Horses The Musical

Theatre Royal, Glasgow Four stars   Life in the 1980s was the best of times for some, the worst for others. Few pop culture creations understood these two sides of the same credit card than John Sullivan’s masterly sit-com of working class aspiration during the Thatcherite boom years. At the show’s heart were siblings Del Boy and Rodney Trotter, the hapless duo attempting to navigate their way through life, but somehow never quite making a million.   This loving homage penned by Sullivan’s son Jim Sullivan with The Fast Show’s Paul Whitehouse revitalises Sullivan senior’s original with a bonus of the sort of showtunes that would make Lionel Bart’s back catalogue sound abstract by comparison. This is not to the detriment of Caroline Jay Ranger’s production, which brings the old gang back together in something akin to the big screen versions of sitcoms that filled cinemas back in the 1970s. Trigger, Boycie, Cassandra, Raquel and all the rest are in attendance in a series of smartly obser