Skip to main content

Iain McClure – ChildMinder

Ghosts are everywhere in ChildMinder, Ian McClure’s new play which opens at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh this month as part of a short three-date tour. Kolbrún Björt Sigfúsdóttir’sproduction of McClure’s play sees Cal MacAninch play Joseph Croan, a fifty-something child psychiatrist returning home from New York to Edinburgh. Here, Joseph’s luxury flat turns out to be the site of the former hospital room where he once assessed a thirteen-year-old boy in what became a life changing moment for both of them. With the boy’s spirit remaining, Joseph becomes haunted on every level.

 

Given that McClure is himself a consultant child psychiatrist who once worked in Edinburgh’s former Royal Infirmary where the residential Quartermile development now stands, all this sounds pretty close to home.

 

“I think one of the big themes of my career has been the awareness of the vulnerability of young boys and young men in society, and what gets branded now as this idea of toxic masculinity,” McClure says. “I don't really like the phrase, but I can understand how it's come about. What goes wrong for boys is something I'm very interested in. I've been in situations that are very stressful assessing children, because you don't want to get it wrong. Out of that I’ve written a play where big events from the past come back to haunt the psychiatrist.’ 

 

While ChildMinder reflects how psychiatrists can be haunted by their patients on a metaphorical level, McClure’s own beliefs take this idea to something more literal.

 

“I do believe in ghosts,’ he says. “I've had experiences where I've encountered a ghost or something. Not many, but I have. Some people think it's nonsense, but I don't. And I think hospitals are places which have a high potential to be haunted, particularly older hospitals, because there is such intensity taking place on a daily basis in these places.’ 

 

McClure’s involvement in theatre dates back to his student days at Cambridge University. His first professionally produced work, Paint Your Well, starred David Tennant in a BBC Radio 4 production. More radio and stage plays followed, with ChildMinder dating back to 2015, when it reached the top twenty of the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting. A new piece, The Garden of Love, is currently being developed with former Tron Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company artistic director, Michael Boyd. In the meantime, ChildMinder remains something of a labour of love.

 

“I wanted to write a play about a child,’ McClure says. “I wanted to write a play about a child psychiatrist. I wanted to write a play about ghosts. People will say, oh, this is a play about child psychiatry, because you're a child psychiatrist, but fundamentally, it's actually a story about a boy searching for his lost mother.’  

 

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 8-10 June; Beacon Arts, Greenock, 14-15 June; Byre Theatre, St Andrews, 28-29 June.


The List, June 2023

 

ends

 

Comments

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) ...

Edinburgh Rocks – The Capital's Music Scene in the 1950s and Early 1960s

Edinburgh has always been a vintage city. Yet, for youngsters growing up in the shadow of World War Two as well as a pervading air of tight-lipped Calvinism, they were dreich times indeed. The founding of the Edinburgh International Festival in 1947 and the subsequent Fringe it spawned may have livened up the city for a couple of weeks in August as long as you were fans of theatre, opera and classical music, but the pubs still shut early, and on Sundays weren't open at all. But Edinburgh too has always had a flipside beyond such official channels, and, in a twitch-hipped expression of the sort of cultural duality Robert Louis Stevenson recognised in his novel, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a vibrant dance-hall scene grew up across the city. Audiences flocked to emporiums such as the Cavendish in Tollcross, the Eldorado in Leith, The Plaza in Morningside and, most glamorous of all due to its revolving stage, the Palais in Fountainbridge. Here the likes of Joe Loss and Ted Heath broug...

Big Gold Dreams – A Story of Scottish Independent Music 1977-1989

Disc 1 1. THE REZILLOS (My Baby Does) Good Sculptures (12/77)  2. THE EXILE Hooked On You (8/77) 3. DRIVE Jerkin’ (8/77) 4. VALVES Robot Love (9/77) 5. P.V.C. 2 Put You In The Picture (10/77) 6. JOHNNY & THE SELF ABUSERS Dead Vandals (11/77) 7. BEE BEE CEE You Gotta Know Girl (11/77) 8. SUBS Gimme Your Heart (2/78) 9. SKIDS Reasons (No Bad NB 1, 4/78) 10. FINGERPRINTZ Dancing With Myself (1/79)  11. THE ZIPS Take Me Down (4/79) 12. ANOTHER PRETTY FACE All The Boys Love Carrie (5/79)  13. VISITORS Electric Heat (5/79) 14. JOLT See Saw (6/79) 15. SIMPLE MINDS Chelsea Girl (6/79) 16. SHAKE Culture Shock (7/79) 17. HEADBOYS The Shape Of Things To Come (7/79) 18. FIRE EXIT Time Wall (8/79) 19. FREEZE Paranoia (9/79) 20. FAKES Sylvia Clarke (9/79) 21. TPI She’s Too Clever For Me (10/79) 22. FUN 4 Singing In The Showers (11/79) 23. FLOWERS Confessions (12/79) 24. TV21 Playing With Fire (4/80) 25. ALEX FERGUSSON Stay With Me Tonight (1980) ...