Botanic Gardens, Glasgow “It’s like Wimbledon,” shouts one wag mid-way through the second half of Jennifer Dick’s production of Shakespeare’s island-set elegy, as a ground-sheet is dragged across the set after the show is halted two thirds of the way in once the rain starts. If ever there was a more appropriate play for the annual Bard in the Botanics season of open-air theatre, The Tempest is it. It’s a shame that the unseasonal elements have been against it to the extent that completing the play before the heavens open has been rare. Because there is much to praise about Dick’s approach, which, by concentrating on the play’s magical aspects, looks and feels like some long lost off-cut from spectral film-maker Kenneth Anger’s archive. This effect is accentuated by a cast whose faces are made up in white, and who, when not onstage, observe proceedings as if peering into some celestial looking-glass. As he conjures up an imaginary storm on Giggy Argo’s wooden shipwreck of a set, Stephen Clyde’s Prospero pulls the strings even more than usual, even if much of it plods shapelessly along. By all accounts, the last half hour of Dick’s production is where Dick's concept really comes into its own, as pretty much all of what’s gone before is revealed to be the isolated imaginings of a Prospero adrift from the real world. This sounds like a fascinatingly poignant construction that makes total sense of the previous longeurs. Sadly, since last Saturday when the ground-sheets were pulled over the set, real life storms have prevented Prospero’s magic from even beginning their flights of fancy. If the fates allow, this weekend’s final two scheduled shows may survive yet. The Herald, July 6th 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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