Eastgate Theatre, Peebles
3 stars
Robert Louis Stevenson probably wasn’t the first to rewrite Scottish history as a Boy’s Own style adventure, and he certainly wasn’t the last. On the one hand, Kidnapped’s eighteenth century orphan Davie Balfour’s on the run rites of passage over land and sea en route to reclaiming his stolen birthright is a heroic yarn of discovery and derring-do. On the other, it’s a state of the nation dot-to-dot through history that throws Davie together with real-life figures in the ferment of some of the most crucial moments that followed the Jacobite Rising.
Cumbernauld Theatre’s Ed Robson takes advantage of this in his pocket-sized three-person touring production which utilises live and recorded back-projections, puppets and story-telling techniques in a quick-fire romp through the landscape.
If the TV news report is an idea pioneered in Peter Watkins’ seminal film, Culloden, the projections of puppet gladiators on the battlefield looks straight off YouTube. Some of the more scenic projections that accompany Scott Hoatson’s Davie galloping through the glens with Peter Callaghan’s Alan Breck Stewart to Bal Cooke’s rollicking score, meanwhile, look like airbrushed offcuts from a Visit Scotland ad. At times this resembles something akin to the sort of TV drama that marks a political epoch with a telly blaring out real-life news footage at the edge of the human narrative centre-stage.
With Alan Steele doubling up as assorted wicked uncles, sea Captains and redcoats, beyond al this, Cumbernauld’s Kidnapped cuts to the heart of what matters to both accidental wanderers in very different ways. While Davie is learning to be a man, like his comrade and adversary, exile has taught him to believe in something beyond home.
The Herald, April 20th 2012
ends
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...
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