Skip to main content

Summer Holiday

Pitlochry Festival Theatre
Four stars

The stage-spanning image of an Elizabeth Yule Pitlochry bus parked outside Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s front door speaks volumes about the new broom approach of PFT’s incoming artistic director Elizabeth Newman at the start of her inaugural production. Shopping local, it seems to suggest, is just as important as the tourist trade which traditionally provides the most picturesque emporium in Scotland with much of its bread and butter. In this sense, Newman and co-director Ben Occhipinti’s suitably frothy revival of Michael Gyngell and Mark Haddigan’s stage version of this classic piece of 1960s big-screen pop bubblegum is making a statement of sorts.

As too are the show’s all-singing, all-dancing quartet of likely lad mechanics led by David Rankine’s toothsome himbo Don, who are looking to up sticks from small town Perthshire and see the world. This they do, not just by wielding a miniature bus around the auditorium as one might lead a Conga, but by bike and, eventually, by goat-filled boat too.

Along the way, the crazy kids bump into a broken-down boy/ girl group as well as Lynwen Haf Roberts’ on-the run starlet Barbara. In some of the show’s most delightfully cartoonish scenes, she is chased by Barbara Hockaday’s pushy showbiz mom Stella and her sidekick Gerry, with both borders and dresses being crossed as they go.

One is tempted to see Brexit metaphors a-go-go here in terms of freedom of movement, holiday amours and all the baby boomer nostalgia that brings with it on Amanda Stoodley’s flag-lined old-school Eurovision style set. In the end, however, it’s the songs that make this well-buffed look at a seemingly more innocent age so infectiously endearing. And it’s actually the title track from another Cliff Richard flick, The Young Ones, that captures the you-and-me-against-the-world essence of romantic yearning that drives the show the best.

While smaller than PFT’s usual musical fare, as a calling card for summer holidays to come, Newman and Occhipinti’s playful take on teenage dreams of leaving promises much for the future, whatever the weather.

The Herald, June 3rd 2019

Ends




Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

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) ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Passage – Hip Rebel Degenerates: Black, White and Red All Over

Prelude – The Power of Three   Fear. Power. Love. This life-and-death (un)holy trinity was the driving force and raisons d’être of The Passage, the still largely unsung Manchester band sired in what we now call the post-punk era, and who between 1978 and 1983 released four albums and a handful of singles.    Led primarily by composer Dick Witts, The Passage bridged the divide between contemporary classical composition and electronic pop as much as between the personal and the political. In the oppositional hotbed of Margaret Thatcher’s first landslide, The Passage fused agit-prop and angst, and released a song called Troops Out as a single. The song offered unequivocal support for withdrawing British troops from Northern Ireland.    They wrote Anderton’s Hall, about Greater Manchester’s born again right wing police chief, James Anderton, and, on Dark Times, rubbed Brechtian polemic up against dancefloor hedonism. On XOYO, their most commercial and potentially mo...
Post a Comment
Read more