THEATRE LIST
11th - 22nd FEBRUARY PROGRAMME INCLUDES:
I UK Premier Performance ofthe Moscow String Quartet with Andrew Marriner
(Principal Clarinet with the LSO).
MOSCOW QUARTET
I Scottish Opera in Verdi’s ’Macbeth’.
C Ul LDHAL L Sfi‘ir ensemble
I Michala Petri and The Guildhall Strong Ensemble in a programme of Mendelssohn, Handel, Mozart and Vivaldi.
I IOU Theatre Coin a new play, ’Pocket Atlas’.
THEATRE
rod
I l—Gelati! Theatre Co in Brecht’s ’The Good Person of Szechwan’.
IScottish Ballet in challenging and innovativetriple bill
including Peter Darrell’s ’Othello’.
Tickets and Programmes available from the Box Office,
Tourist Information Centre, 78 South Street, St Andrews. Tel: 0334 76106.
0 Theatre is listed by city first, then by venue, running in alphabetical order, except for touring shows which are listed by the name of the show. Please send details not Iaterthan 10 days before publication date. Cabaret is listed separately.
GLASGOW
0 CITIZENS Gorbals Street. 42‘) 0022/8177. Box Office Mon—Sat 10am—8pm. Bar.
Death of a Salesman Until Sat 7 Feb. 7.30pm. £3; students £1 ; ()APs and unemployed £1 in advance. free at door. The Citizens’ open their spring season with Arthur Miller‘s masterpiece about the empty life and death ofWilly Loman. a travelling salesman. See Review.
0 CUMBERNAULD THEATRE (‘umbernauld. 0236 732887. Box Office Mon—Fri 10am—6pm. Sat 10am—3pm. 6-8pm perf evgs. Bar/Cafe.
Bang! Fri 23 and Sat 24 Jan. 8pm.
THEA
£1.50. Phase Stage Productions in a production on a nuclear theme. Subject to zwailability: please check. Love Act Fri 30 and Sat 31 Jan. 7.45pm. £2 (£1). Mircalla Productions in an adaptation ofa novel by M.E. Austin about a prostitute whose confidence that she knows all types of men is shaken when she meets the unexpected. Tam D’ Shanter'I‘hurs 5 and Fri 6 Feb. 1.30am] 7.30pm. £1.75 (£1.50). Edinburgh Puppet (‘o in their much-acclaimed. spectacular production of Burns‘ famous tale
0 DRAMA CENTRE 126 Ingram Street, 041552 5827.
'Tis Pity She’s a Whore Wed 4—Sat 7 Feb. 7.30pm. John Street Theatre Co in the 17th century playwright John Ford's tragic masterpiece about the illicit love between a brother and sister.
Cabaret Nights See Cabaret.
O KING'S Bath Street. Box Office
DEATH OF A SALESMAN
Citizens, Glasgow.
So influential a critique of the American Dream has ArthurMiller’s small man's tragedy become, that it is a play we readily assume we ‘know'.
Giles Havergai’s production, aided by Kenny Miller’s design, uses this sense of recognition to full effect. A stylised set is littered with the symbol of affluent middle—class America -the fridge. Doors, hanging open, occasionally glowing alarmingly from within, illuminated by their own lights, they are in such abundance however, that it’s not affluence that they suggest. Rather they resemble the auto scrapyards used as an image in so many ‘thinking’ American movies that it too has become a cliche.
Against this background of almost expected references, Havergal directs his cast into giving restrained portrayals of American type, which allow the individuality of the characters the opportunity to be seen. Ron Donnachie as the salesman Willy Loman, who treats his whole life, including his family as one big market, dominates most of the play. The character is almost half-machine - a machine over-extended like the fridges with the doors aiar or the car whose engines he drives into the ground while carefully preserving with wax the ageing paint job. Throughout the play he moves nearer to the explosion that always threatens— in the end he crashes the car, but his slow suicide has also been by the inhalation of poisonous town gas. Donnachie captures the inevitability of Willy’s death, while allowing us to see the struggling individual at the same time. With at times a baby face of
bewilderment wet with sweat, it is a character we want to be able to respect.
Dnly Julia Blalock as Willy‘s wife, perhaps the hardest role to succeed in, fails to combine the individuality of her character and its symbolic position at the hearth of America, but both boys are excellent. Tim Woodward accurately and movineg times the self-revelation of the true nature of his character. At just the right moment the focus swings from Willy to Biff as the audience realises that the Salesman who only wanted to be ‘well-liked' had failed to understand that more importantly his son loved him.
Just as the staging dispenses early on with the obvious trappings of the American Dream, so the production demonstrates that the play is less the tragedy of Willy's death than the tragedy of his son, who lives in the wasteland of the exploded myth. (Nigel Bilien).
14 The List 23 Jan— 5 Feb