Skip to main content

Citizens new work panel

The Citizens Theatre has become more commonly associated with its radical reworkings of classic plays, yet there have been some notable premieres here too.

One of the earliest of these harks back to 1967, when Peter Nichols’ groundbreaking study of a couple dealing with their disabled daughter, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, appeared.

During the triumvirate years, in-between adapting a plethora of works by Goethe, Schiller, Proust and Goldoni, Robert David Macdonald somehow managed several original works, including Summit Conference, Webster and Chinchilla.

The 1990s saw a slew of adaptations from Scotland’s fertile contemporary literary scene, with a version of Jeff Torrington’s Swing Hammer Swing a standout.

This trend came on the back of Harry Gibson’s stage adaptation of Trainspotting, which predated the iconic film, and gave rise to further adaptations by Gibson of other Welsh novels, including The Marabou Stork Nightmares, Glue and Filth.

This trend continued through a version of Louise Welsh’s The Cutting Room right up to outgoing artistic director Jeremy Raison’s acclaimed version of Ron Butlin’s novel, The Sound of My Voice.

More rarified, perhaps, was Andrea Hart’s similarly praised version of Nothing, an already dialogue-centred experimental novel by Henry Green, which was originally directed by MacDonald.

Another member of the triumvirate, Giles Havergal, adapted Graham Greene’s Travels With My Aunt in a four person version that went on to travel the world.

More recently, David Greig’s original works for TAG, Yellow Moon and The Monster in the Hall, have enlightened younger audiences.

At this time of year we should also remember the Citz’s stream of original Christmas plays, from adaptations of classics by Myles Rudge right up to new works by Alan McHugh, who this year puts his signature to the main stage production of Beauty and the Beast.

The Herald, November 2010

ends

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...

Myra Mcfadyen - 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 Mi...

Andrew Midgley obituary

Born October 26th 1965 Died October 28th 2010 Andrew Midgley, who has died of a heart attack during a session in a Musselburgh gym aged forty-five, didn’t look like a pop star. Neither did this most garrulously playful of raconteurs particularly enjoy talking about his brief time in the charts during the early 1990s. Yet, while there was far more to this most singular of autodidacts, as one half of club-dance duo Cola Boy, Midgley caught the pop-rave zeitgeist with appearances on Top of the Pops performing the band’s infectiously catchy top ten hit, Seven Ways To Love. Even here, however, just as he would later apply diligence and care behind the scenes as a sub-editor on the Edinburgh Evening News, creating two of the funniest websites on the planet or managing an award-winning comedian, the man nicknamed ‘Boy Naughty’ preferred to stay in the background, allowing former Wham! backing singer turned Radio Two DJ Janey Lee Grace to bask in the day-glo spotlight of the period. Mid...