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Contemporary Scottish Plays
To paraphrase Alistair Beaton's Caledonia - the first play in this collection - 'The English have anthologies, the Spanish have anthologies, the French have anthologies . . . why should not Scotland have its anthology?'
Scotland is entering a crucial period in its history, where its identity is being debated daily, from everyday conversation to the national and international press. At the same time, its theatre is resurgent, with key Scottish playwrights, theatres and theatre companies expanding their performance vocabularies while coming to prominence in national and international contexts.
Caledonia is a tale of hubris and delusion, portraying a crucial slice of Scotland's history and its foray into imperial colonialism told with dark humour and creative flair, by award-winning playwright and satirist Alistair Beaton.
Bullet Catch, by Rob Drummond, is a unique theatrical experience exploring the world of magic, featuring mind-reading, levitation, and the most notorious finale in show business.
Morna Pearson's The Artist Man and the Mother Woman is a wickedly funny, deceptively simple, surreal portrait of a spectacularly dysfunctional relationship.
Rantin', by Kieran Hurley draws on storytelling, live music and an unapologetically haphazard take on Scottish folk tradition, in an attempt to stitch together fragmented stories to reveal a botched patchwork of a nation.
First performed at the Royal Court in 2013, Narrative by Anthony Neilson is a theatrical exploration of the the boundaries and possibilities of storytelling.
Featuring plays from Alistair Beaton, Rob Drummond, Morna Pearson, Kieran Hurley and Anthony Neilson, this collection is edited by Dr. Trish Reid, a leading critical voice on Scottish theatre.
Scotland is entering a crucial period in its history, where its identity is being debated daily, from everyday conversation to the national and international press. At the same time, its theatre is resurgent, with key Scottish playwrights, theatres and theatre companies expanding their performance vocabularies while coming to prominence in national and international contexts.
Caledonia is a tale of hubris and delusion, portraying a crucial slice of Scotland's history and its foray into imperial colonialism told with dark humour and creative flair, by award-winning playwright and satirist Alistair Beaton.
Bullet Catch, by Rob Drummond, is a unique theatrical experience exploring the world of magic, featuring mind-reading, levitation, and the most notorious finale in show business.
Morna Pearson's The Artist Man and the Mother Woman is a wickedly funny, deceptively simple, surreal portrait of a spectacularly dysfunctional relationship.
Rantin', by Kieran Hurley draws on storytelling, live music and an unapologetically haphazard take on Scottish folk tradition, in an attempt to stitch together fragmented stories to reveal a botched patchwork of a nation.
First performed at the Royal Court in 2013, Narrative by Anthony Neilson is a theatrical exploration of the the boundaries and possibilities of storytelling.
Featuring plays from Alistair Beaton, Rob Drummond, Morna Pearson, Kieran Hurley and Anthony Neilson, this collection is edited by Dr. Trish Reid, a leading critical voice on Scottish theatre.
375 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 25, 2014
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January 1, 2023
Caledonia, by Alistair Beaton: I really like contemporary history plays, so this was right up my alley, and I'm no big fan of capitalism either, so the dramatic failure of an ambitious capitalist venture is generally a fine thing. However, the Caledonia colony experiment was a dark chapter in Scotland's history, so that part was not so good. But the play itself is really good. Beaton has done an excellent job balancing rather realistic main action with some brief songs that punctuate the action and with short metatheatrical asides from the ensemble (collectively termed The Nameless of the Earth). On the one hand, the majority of the plot action is coherent, believable, and tells a story that is simultaneously easy to follow and heart-breaking in the scale of its failure. On the other hand, the metatheatrical comments and the use of music to support and highlight the main action lend the play a dynamism that helps move the action of the play forward.
https://youtu.be/m31ZxhfrVaQ
Bullet Catch, by Rob Drummond: What a crazy play. This is part magic act, part conventional theatre, part stunt. Drummond's show is based on the actual incident of a bullet catch act by William Henderson--stage name William Wonder--during which he was accidentally shot and killed by an audience volunteer named Charles Garth. The conventional element of this show is that it relates Henderson and Garth's stories, trying to understand these people, their motives, the desires, their views, etc. However, this show also runs like a magic act, where Drummond chooses an audience volunteer as his assistant/Garth, and performs a number of tricks over the course of getting to know that person. But ultimately, the bullet catch is a stunt. It seems kind of amazing that an audience volunteer who would have developed a certain amount of affection for and connection with Drummond over the course of the show could be convinced to fire a bullet at his mouth, but apparently most people do pull the trigger. I think one of the most fascinating things about this play is how much it relies on the semi-scripted participation of an audience member--as opposed to most plays, which have all the dialogue written out and the performers just need to remember and repeat it properly. This show depends on Drummond's improvisational ability to react to the audience volunteer.
The Artist Man and the Mother Woman, by Morna Pearson: This is a really creepy, but really good play. It's creepy in that kind of Psycho way, by which I mean that there is an unnaturally close bond between between the mother and her emotionally stunted son, which leads to all sorts of unsettling behavior (which I won't spoil). The dialogue is largely written in Scots (though I'm not savvy enough to know whether this is a distinctly regional dialect, like Glaswegian, or a more generic Scots), but it is generally quite understandable for an Anglophone reader.
Narrative, by Anthony Neilson: Not really my kind of play. Neilson says in the notes for production that he didn't want this to be an "experimental" show, but it still seems (at least moderately) experimental to me. The basic idea of Narrative is to explore what it means for audiences to view a play in the digital era--the era of multiple tabs open, hyperlinks, sound bits, video clips, etc. So the structure of the show is fragmented, with multiple scenes/dialogues often playing on top of one another, producing a weird cacophony of disparate elements interacting to form a strange, perhaps rhizomatic whole.
Rantin, by Kieran Hurley: Partly for the same reason I didn't care for John McGrath's The Cheviot, The Stag, and the Black, Black Oil, this play doesn't really do it for me. Actually, in the "Note on the Original Production," the performers (because this really isn't a single authored piece, despite the book listing Hurley as the author) identify this as a ceilidh-play, using McGrath's term. The play is made up of a number of interwoven/fragmented stories, some more developed than others, with a mix of songs included. It is a kind of story/musical jumble, rather than a single plot line or narrative. I get the technique, but it isn't really the kind of play I prefer.
https://youtu.be/m31ZxhfrVaQ
Bullet Catch, by Rob Drummond: What a crazy play. This is part magic act, part conventional theatre, part stunt. Drummond's show is based on the actual incident of a bullet catch act by William Henderson--stage name William Wonder--during which he was accidentally shot and killed by an audience volunteer named Charles Garth. The conventional element of this show is that it relates Henderson and Garth's stories, trying to understand these people, their motives, the desires, their views, etc. However, this show also runs like a magic act, where Drummond chooses an audience volunteer as his assistant/Garth, and performs a number of tricks over the course of getting to know that person. But ultimately, the bullet catch is a stunt. It seems kind of amazing that an audience volunteer who would have developed a certain amount of affection for and connection with Drummond over the course of the show could be convinced to fire a bullet at his mouth, but apparently most people do pull the trigger. I think one of the most fascinating things about this play is how much it relies on the semi-scripted participation of an audience member--as opposed to most plays, which have all the dialogue written out and the performers just need to remember and repeat it properly. This show depends on Drummond's improvisational ability to react to the audience volunteer.
The Artist Man and the Mother Woman, by Morna Pearson: This is a really creepy, but really good play. It's creepy in that kind of Psycho way, by which I mean that there is an unnaturally close bond between between the mother and her emotionally stunted son, which leads to all sorts of unsettling behavior (which I won't spoil). The dialogue is largely written in Scots (though I'm not savvy enough to know whether this is a distinctly regional dialect, like Glaswegian, or a more generic Scots), but it is generally quite understandable for an Anglophone reader.
Narrative, by Anthony Neilson: Not really my kind of play. Neilson says in the notes for production that he didn't want this to be an "experimental" show, but it still seems (at least moderately) experimental to me. The basic idea of Narrative is to explore what it means for audiences to view a play in the digital era--the era of multiple tabs open, hyperlinks, sound bits, video clips, etc. So the structure of the show is fragmented, with multiple scenes/dialogues often playing on top of one another, producing a weird cacophony of disparate elements interacting to form a strange, perhaps rhizomatic whole.
Rantin, by Kieran Hurley: Partly for the same reason I didn't care for John McGrath's The Cheviot, The Stag, and the Black, Black Oil, this play doesn't really do it for me. Actually, in the "Note on the Original Production," the performers (because this really isn't a single authored piece, despite the book listing Hurley as the author) identify this as a ceilidh-play, using McGrath's term. The play is made up of a number of interwoven/fragmented stories, some more developed than others, with a mix of songs included. It is a kind of story/musical jumble, rather than a single plot line or narrative. I get the technique, but it isn't really the kind of play I prefer.
Displaying 1 of 1 review