Tron Theatre, Glasgow 4 stars Alison Peebles is on her feet for the entire eighty-five minutes of her new show, devised with Belgian director Lies Pauwels and an ensemble of three dance artists and a little girl for the National Theatre of Scotland. For this most charismatic of actors, it must be agony. Not for having to carry this defiantly impressionistic meditation on her life as a performer who was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis twelve years ago, although that must be hard enough. Rather, for a woman who confesses her love for shoes but who can’t wear high heels anymore, having to watch lithe young bodies stretch, pirouette and cavort with choreographed perfection from the front corner of the stage must add insult to an injury that’s not of her making. This, though, is the point of the exercise, which puts the body politic centre-stage in a series of routines underscored by a jukebox full of early 1960s pop hits, and played out in a mint-coloured room with a glass-fronted pink boudoir at the back. The little girl sports a sparkly scarlet dress as she announces a potted history of Peebles’ wild years. One of the performers dressed as a ballerina spins out of control, showing off injuries of her own. Another howls into a microphone, while the sole male onstage dances in the same scarlet frock. If this is all post-modern showbiz, only the bobbed figure of Peebles in a dressing-gown is for real. Led carefully out in heels once more, as she turns physical debilitation into a fiercely defiant work of art, the pleasure on Peebles’ face as she gets to walk tall once more is an image to treasure. The Herald, September 14th 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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