list.co.uk/theatre
PREVIEW ADAPTATION THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Fri 7 & Sat 8 Jun Life, the Universe and Everything are reimagined in a new stage production of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, touring to Glasgow’s Theatre Royal this month. Original cast members from the long-running radio series reunite, alongside superfans in cameo roles, including Neil Gaiman and Billy Boyd for the Scottish dates. The protagonist, hapless, tea-lover Arthur Dent was originally written with actor Simon Jones in mind: he maintains that, while the touring show has a wealth of tricks up its sleeve, the more pernickety fans insist that certain aspects remain true to the original.
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Whether on stage or screen, few can forget Willy Russell’s young, earnest heroine, in Educating Rita, a working class girl hungry for education who finds herself under the tutelage of a lost, boozed up lecturer, searching for life beyond academia.
For Brookside actress-turned star of the stage, Claire Sweeney, it’s been a role worth waiting for. ‘Growing up in Liverpool, Willy Russell was a hero to me and the part of Rita was such an inspiration,’ she says. ‘I’m delighted to be playing one of his heroines.’ As an actress, playing to Rita’s vulnerability and
inner turmoil has been a challenge.
‘A lot of people want to hear the lines repeated ‘She’s so conflicted yet strong, which is so
verbatim,’ he says. ‘It’s important that the character is very much familiar to people, however it is fun to bring the show to a new generation.’ Audiences can expect well-kent scenes alongside
lesser-known ones, a reimagined ending and the occasional flying teacup. ‘It’s a nostalgic evening,’ reflects Jones, ‘but the audience will leave thinking seriously about the issues that Douglas raised: particularly the nuisance of everyday bureaucracy, albeit in fairly fantastical situations.’ (Kirstyn Smith)
interesting to play,’ says Sweeney. ‘And while Willy likes to update his scripts, people who enjoyed her character before will still find so much to love about her.’ Sweeney admits she is relishing the idea of
bringing Rita to an audience on her own terms. ‘I could think of Julie Walters and Michael Caine in the film, but I’d just get scared. It’s about bringing your interpretations, and hopefully people will connect with it.’ (Anna Millar)
Theatre
PREVIEW DOUBLE BILL KRAPP’S LAST TAPE/FOOTFALLS Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, Wed 30 May–Sat 9 Jun
Following on from the success of his productions of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal and Shakespeare’s King Lear, Dominic Hill concludes his inaugural season at Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre with a double bill of short plays by the great, Irish dramatist Samuel Beckett. In bringing together Krapp’s Last Tape and Footfalls, Hill is staging one of Beckett’s best-known plays alongside a neglected classic. Krapp’s Last Tape, which premiered in 1958, is a
bleakly humorous piece. It finds an old man (the titular Krapp) at the end of his life, listening to a recording of his younger self, and recording his final, annual tape on an old reel-to-reel tape machine. In Hill’s production, it will be performed by Northern Irish actor Gerard Murphy; who famously played Macbeth, opposite David Hayman’s Lady M, at the Citz back in 1979. Footfalls (1976), was written for celebrated
actress Billie Whitelaw. In the play we see and hear a sleepless, middle-aged woman, May (played in Hill’s production by Kathryn Howden), pacing a hallway. She speaks with her elderly, declining mother (voiced at the Citz by Kay Gallie), who lies, unseen, in a bedroom. Like so much of Beckett’s oeuvre, it is a deeply poetic, precisely structured work, which alights movingly on matters of memory and death.
‘One of the things I love about Beckett,’ says Hill,
‘is that he is a very visual writer . . . For him the image is usually the starting point. As a director, I really respond to that. ‘These two plays encapsulate very well Beckett’s
tendency to explore a theatrical conceit, not for too long, but in a way which is profoundly affecting and haunting.’ (Mark Brown)
PREVIEW REVIVAL EDUCATING RITA Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Mon 28–Thu 31 May PREVIEW CLASSIC PLAYS CLASSIC CUTS SUMMER SEASON Oran Mor, Glasgow, Mon 11 Jun–Sat 7 Jul
In what is traditionally a quiet time for theatre, Glaswegians in search of a dramatic fix are strikingly well-served, and there’s an especially tasty array of bite-sized classics being served up for lunch down at A Play, a Pie and a Pint. Coming between a season of contemporary writing from the Arab world and the annual summer panto, the selection itself is nothing if not diverse. ‘Variety is very important to us,’ says producer David Maclennan, ‘and of course people bring their enthusiasms to us – in each case there was somebody pushing the play.’ So it is that we have actor and comedian Sandy Nelson (pictured) transposing Pygmalion to fin-de-siècle Edinburgh, Marcus Roche translating Ubu Roi, Philip Howard topping and tailing rarely seen Shakespearean history King John and Jen Hainey rounding things off with Noel Coward’s Private Lives. ‘We’ve got tremendous audiences now at Oran Mor,’ says Maclennan. ‘The most common thing people ask when they come in is “what’s on today?”’ So they come along assuming it’ll be something good? ‘Well, hoping . . .’ is the modest reply. ‘I can’t say that everything we do is five stars but we get as close as we can!’ (Laura Ennor)
24 May–21 Jun 2012 THE LIST 127