Dundee Rep 4 stars Life is one long tea-break in Chris Rattray’s 1960s-set play, first seen on Dundee Rep’s stage fourteen year ago, and now revived in Andrew Panton’s solidly assured production. Performed back to back with Sharman Macdonald’s She Town, this is the male flip-side to that play’s women only zone, as it follows a sextet of mill workers escaping from the daily grind via the laddish banter of the rest room and its accompanying toilets. It’s here we meet simple-minded skivvy Archie, old lags Robert, Geordie and Jim, upstart Teddy-Boy Henny and Beatle-loving Kevin, who mark time indulging in assorted shaggy-dog stories and pranks with seemingly little consequence. Out of this comes a lovingly observed portrait of working class society in flux that revels in its localism even as it follows in the work-play tradition of John Byrne’s The Slab Boys and Roddy McMillan’s The Bevellers. Barrie Hunter’s pompous Robert and Martin McBride’s nasty Henny are both relics from an earlier age, while only Jonathan Holt’s music-loving Kevin is looking towards any kind of future. It may be Guy Mitchell’s She Wears Red Feathers that opens the show, but it’s Please Please Me by The Beatles that closes it. If those two recorded tunes book-end the play, it’s Michael Marra’s original songs, performed live by the cast, that provide its pulse. Soaked in grizzled pathos and wry observations, stylistically they encapsulate the move from skiffle to rock and roll to the 1960s beat boom that acts as a metaphor for society’s even greater shifts. The malicious act that thwarts Kevin’s ambitions is telling too of how old orders cling to power by any means necessary. The Herald, September 17th 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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