Theatre
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Have you seen Priscilla: Queen of the Desert? You’ll remember, then, the bush pub of an appalling and barbaric nature that the drag queens encounter, and their problems with grafittied buses and homophobic violence. The thing about that town, Broken Hill, is that it really is like that. I’ve been there. And the pub? Well, it’s also quite real, and was the local of a very close friend of mine. It’s my belief that Broken Hill is the worse town in the world, but you might, nationalistically, argue for Irvine, Cumbernauld or Peterhead. Whatever the location, these places and as a result, their people, have issues, so I guess that’s a good subject for drama.
douglas Maxwell appears to be thinking along these lines, with this new play for Paines Plough’s This Other England Season. John Tiffany, the incumbent director of New Work for the National Theatre of Scotland, is directing the tale of a town that wins the Worst Town in Scotland award. The wealth this brings to the area leads to a local campaign to make the town even worse, in order to retain the award for the next year. So are wily, Whisky Galore locals pitted, once again, against the
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Sir Stafford Cripps figures of the Ealing years?
Hardly, says Tiffany, who feels the play’s politics are darker and more contemporary. ‘I wouldn‘t say it's Whiskey Galoreish because that’s about a town where people all get together to get something done. This is more about a town which is very dysfunctional. People are more dislocated here. They can’t find a way to get together until the very end of the play. This is a community that can‘t be anti-social because it’s not social in the first place.’
Tiffany won’t give too much away about how the town makes itself worse, but is keenly aware of the politics that underlie the scenario. “This is very much about the politics we’ve inherited from Thatcher and the 805, because the political model, whatever you call it, hasn’t changed since then. It’s about that decline in community. When we started rehearsals that Demolition show for the BBC was on, and in response to the question of what buildings you want demolished, people wrote in to have the whole town of Cumbernauld demolished. lt’s tragic really.‘
For all that, Tiffany promises a good deal of humour and warmth in the course of the play. ‘lt’s very optimistic, a nice end to the season.‘ A feelgood play with a social conscience? It’s high time we saw such a thing. (Steve Cramer)
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King's Theatre. Glasgow. until Sat
2 Apr. then touring
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