THEATRE LIST
Will You Still Need Me Until Sun 3 (Not Fri 1). Members £2.50 Guests £3.50 Concs £1 . A triple bill of one-act plays by Ena Lamont Stewart; ‘Towards Evening‘, ‘Walkies Time’ and ‘Knocking on the Wall’. Each set in a different era they are linked by a common theme; the unexpected revelation of feelings 3 between two people. While the situations themselves are not entirely credible, the emotions they reveal are sympathetically'and movineg drawn.
Up ‘n’ Under II Tue 5—Sat 9 Nov. 8pm. Sat mat 9 Nov, 5pm. Members £2.50 Guests £3.50 Concs £1 . The return match — sequel to the vastly successful Up ‘n‘ Under 1; Hull Truck Theatre company in John Godber‘s sell-out production of his comedy about amateur rugby.
Mark Miwurdz Fri 8 & Sat 9 Nov. 10.30pm. Members £2.50 Guests £3.50 Concs £1 . Late night special from The Tron; a one-man evening of satire from Mark Miwurdz ofThe Tube.
Howards Revenge Sun 10 Nov 7pm & 9pm. Members £2.50 Guests £3.50 Cones £1 . Donald Campbell‘s funny and telling play about the 19th century actorJ. B. Howard, condemned to give ‘immortal performances‘ of Rob Roy — warmly portrayed by Findlay Welsh who has a marvellously mischievous time with stage conventions. The production won a Fringe First during this year‘s Edinburgh Festival.
Tron Dance Week Tue 12 Nov—Sun 17 Nov. SEE DANCE.
Playreading: Macintosh Sat 2 Nov, 2.30pm. Free. As part ofthe Tron‘s season ofSaturday lunchtime none-too-serious playreadings; this latest is presented in association with Immediate Theatre and written by Lorna McIntyre.
Playreading: The Harbinger Report Sat 9 Nov, 2.30pm. Free in the bar. The Tron‘s series of light-hearted playreadings in the bar takes on a work by the inimitable Glasgow writer Alasdair Gray, more normally known for his prose writing.
EDINBURGH
0 ASSEMBLY ROOMS 54 George Street, 226 2428. A mini festival of theatre (7—10 Nov), mounted as part of the Informal European Theatre Meeting, offering a second chance to see some shows and a first chance to see others: all of them inventive and interesting developments in theatre. Tickets are £3. £6 for 3 shows. All shows are open to the public (see Feature).
Theatre on the Move is now all being shown in the Assembly Rooms (except for one performance in the Fruitmarket Gallery) and not in the Lyceum Studio. These details are correct at time of going to press.
The Hunchback of Hotre OameEdinburgh Suite, Fri 8 Nov. 7pm. Communicado Theatre Company in their highly inventive production of Andrew Dallmeyer’s adaptation of the novel by Victor Hugo, which, with its funny but moving use of ‘gothic farce’ (wonderfully complemented by ‘gothic jazz’) deservedly won a
Fringe First at this year’s Edinburgh Festival.
invisible Work Wildman Room. Fri 8 Nov. 7pm. Gary Stevens and Julian Maynard Smith of Station House Opera in a double act in which two men score over one another by creating an image in each other‘s minds and then systematically reinforcing it.
Letters Alone Wildman Room. Fri 8 Nov 10pm. Jack Klaff uses his chameleon talent to dramatise the letters from a young white South African living in London and to present his shifting perspectives and the changing relationships between him and those he leaves behind.
Cupboard Man Edinburgh Suite, Fri 8 Nov. 10pm. Another chance to see the much acclaimed. award-winning production ofJulia Bardsley and Phelim McDermott‘s adaptation of a short story by Ian McEwan about a man locked inside his phobias.
8961 - Songs of Grief and Hope Edinburgh Suite, Sat 9 Nov. 4pm. Brith Gof use songs. music and the experiences ofone woman to look at the ‘disappearances‘ that took place in Argentina during the ‘70s — which numbered 8961.
Ho Son of Mine Edinburgh Suite. Sat 9 Nov. 7pm. Compagnie Philippe Gaulier in an outrageously irreverent parody ofthe Holy Trinity, in which three ‘buffoons‘ take their revenge on the heavenly Powers with inimitable rudeness. Marcia Kahan translates from Philippe Gaulier’s original and Celia Gore Booth, Joyce Deans and Annabel Arden play the rebels.
Kafka Wildman Room. Sat 9 Nov. 7pm. First presented as a tribute for Kafka‘s 100th anniversary, Jack Klaff‘s performance uses Kafka‘s writings to explore the nature of the man behind the work.
You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down Wildman Room, Sat 9 Nov, 10pm. Anne Seagrave in a one woman show balancing emotional weakness and strength.
The White Woman Edinburgh Suite, Sat 9 Nov. 10pm. David Glass. the highly acclaimed mime artist in his one man show about the pressures of modern life on the individual.
A Day Down A Goldmine Wildman Room, Sun 10 Nov. 4pm. George Wyllie‘s weird and wonderful, crazy excursion through the concept of money, featuring Wyllie’s own amazing sculptures (sic!) and Bill Paterson. of Comfort and Joy fame. Whole Parts Edinburgh Suite. Sun 10 Nov. 4pm. Peta Lily Mime Theatre in a double bill; the one piece, Women‘s Parts, presenting multi-layered images ofwomen, the second, Hiroshima Mon Amour, is a black comedy about a performer giving the final performances of her Edith Piaf numbers.
Tales of Moonlight and Rain Edinburgh Suite, Sun 10 Nov. 7pm. The Paupers Carnival Theatre in a combination of dance, theatre, mime and puppetry drawing on Japanese Tales of the Supernatural. Man Act Wildman Room , Sun 10 Nov, 7pm. Philip Mackenzie and Simon Thorne present through
mime and dance the notions that maketh the idea ‘Man‘.
Work in Progress Sun 10 Nov. 10pm. The dancer Belinda Neave with a solo performance of her ‘work in progress‘.
0 BEDLAM THEATRE Forrest Road. 225 9893.
A Simple Story of Love Wed 6 Nov, 1pm. £1.25. Members 75p. An adaptation for stage ofTed Ling‘s play originally written for television. The interrogation of Ambrose Fogarty Mon ll—Sat 16 Nov. 7.30pm. £2. £1.75 (£1.25 members). First showing in Scotland of a play by one of Belfast's best known playwrights. Martin Lynch. Set inside an RUC
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station in West Belfast it questions methods of interrogation used while subtly keeping the question of Fogarty‘s innocence open-ended. Not suitable for children.
0 BROUGHTOH HIGH SCHOOL Stockbridge. 332 6316.
She Stoops To Conquer Broughton Youth Theatre in their first ever production; Oliver Goldsmith‘s marvellously funny eighteenth century comedy which has lost nothing over the years since it was written.
; o rnurmanm GALLERY 29 Market ’ Street. 226 5781.
Undine and the Still Sat 9 Nov. 8pm. £3. As part ofthe public
— LIFE OF GALILEO
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Scottish Theatre Company
Star-gazing is all the rage at the moment with the approach of Halley‘s Comet and National Astronomy Week. The science oi sky exploration has even acquired a novel local flavour with the discovery at Strathclyde University of a flexible optical mirror which promises to revolutionize the telescope, so it is perhaps no coincidence that the Scottish Theatre Company chose to produce Bertolt Brecht's ‘Life of Galileo' lortheir autumn tour.
Brecht's play set in 17th century Italy butwritten after his flight from Nazi Germany in 1938, focuses on a society prepared to strangle truth and ignore common sense to preserve the status quo. Galileo's conviction that the earth moves and is not, as Aristotle decreed, the fixed centre of the universe, is rejected as a poisonous heresy by the omnipotent Church. In a scene which skilfully blends contempt and fear of the unknown, a group of carousing monks and cardinals drunkenly imitate earth's orbital movement and loudly protest that God would not have sent his son to ‘a minor lrolicking star.’
When the curtain rises on Peter Dews production, Galileo is unceremoniously discovered vigorously scrubbing I'lS back in a tin bath tub. Torn Fleming plays the pioneer astronomer as a bluft outspoken man with an insatiable appetite for knowledge and goose
i
livers stewed in apple. His inabilityto suffer fools gladly and intitial political naively are later replaced by a resilient
I irony as he slides into apparent I compromise with the authorities to 3 avoid the heretic's fate of ‘being
roasted like a mm at the stake. When he publicly recants and is bitterly
; rebuked by his former pupil, Andrea i Sarti (Hon Bain) — ‘Pity the country i which cannot produce a hero“, Fleming
injects both pathos and dignity into the
- reply: ‘Pity the country which needs a hero’.
The selfishness of genius is convincingly exposed in Galileo‘s relationship with his daughter Virginia, sensitively acted by Gerda Stevenson. For however revolutionary his
scientificideas, his attitude towards ' women seems disturbingly primitive.
Not only does he wreck his daughter’s chance of a happy marriage but he also excludes her from his work. As he dictates lettersto her in his blind old age one is reminded of the celebrated misogynist, Milton.
Halcro Johnston as the Ballad Singer prefaces each scene with baritoned voiced rhymes which establishes the familiar Brechtian ‘alienatlon effect'. This both heightens the absurdity of religious despotism and lends an episodic rhythm to this shorter version of ‘Galileo’ which the playwright first produced with film actor, Charles Laughton, in 1947. (Lucy Ash)
The List 1-14 November 17