King’s Theatre, Glasgow Four stars The football season may theoretically be over for the summer, but as diehard fans know in their bones, it never really ends. With this in mind, this latest and apparently final run of Davie Carswell’s loving homage to one of Celtic Football Club’s greatest heroes, whose life was so cruelly cut short by skin cancer in 2008 aged just 51, could probably be seen as either a pre season warm-up. And what a match Carswell and director Adam Felix O’brien have knitted together. Burns is brought to life by way of a series of dramatised anecdotes that make up the story of a man who came up from Glasgow’s Calton district to become a top-flight player and manager of the team that was already in his blood. As the play makes clear too, Burns never forgot his own description of himself as ‘a supporter who got lucky.’ Football may be at the play’s centre, but Carswell’s script focuses on the man beyond, be it as husband, father, devout Cathol...
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.