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Previews | THEATRE
METAPHYSICAL THRILLER THE DRIVER’S SEAT Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, Sat 13–Sat 27 Jun; Tramway, Glasgow, Thu 2–Sat 4 Jul
National Theatre Of Scotland artistic director Laurie Sansom follows up his successful run of Rona Munro’s The James Plays in Edinburgh and London with an adaptation of work by another critically acclaimed Scottish voice, Muriel Spark. Her classic short novel from 1970, The
Driver’s Seat, is a psychological thriller: not so much a whodunnit as a whydunnit. The protagonist Lise’s detached nature is the antithesis of conventional female narrators, and Spark conjures a world of confusion and doubt, where the narrator reveals that they are about to be murdered, her wanderings tracing a nihilistic path across Europe.
For Sansom, Spark's ambiguous tale was
perfect for adaptation. ‘It combines her razor sharp wit and crisp narrative voice with an enigmatic central figure,’ he explains, ‘that slips in and out of focus until its final shocking conclusion.’ An impressive cast includes Morven Christie
in the title role as Lise, with support from Michael Thomson, Gabriel Quigley and Ryan Fletcher. With a set design by 2013 Linbury Prize winner Ana Inés Jabares, Sansom should bring a skin-prickling new aesthetic to a whole new audience with this challenging and provocative study of one woman’s alienation in an uncertain and terrifying terrain. (Lorna Irvine)
P H O T O © E O N C A R E Y
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NEW FESTIVAL UNFIX CCA, Glasgow, Fri 10–Sun 12 Jul
‘UNFIX is essentially a brand new festival,’ explains artistic director Paul Michael Henry. ‘It has its roots in my work with Butoh internationally, and specifically the “Moving Bodies” Butoh tour that happened at the CCA last year.’ Henry is a prime mover within Butoh, a form of Japanese dance theatre, and his interests in spirituality and performance have led him to develop a festival that celebrates ecology and renewal.
‘UNFIX is conceived as an act of love, a bear hug to the world, a prayer of sorts,’ he adds. ‘UNFIX is welcoming film, live art, visual and contemporary art, political and climate activists, philosophical and spiritual thinkers to go at this whole issue in a communal stab at enlightenment!’ Ecology is not merely a matter of environment:
UNFIX recognises a wider definition that sees social activity, even the body’s behaviour, as ecology. The festival’s vision is not just about presenting performance, but working towards a discussion of how the individual can be part of a greater whole.
As Henry concludes: ‘To lapse into tagline
speak, UNFIX conceives individual human lives as a microcosm of the whole: climate change and ecological transformation are happening inside your body, RIGHT NOW!’ (Gareth K Vile)
SHAKESPEARE ALFRESCO BARD IN THE BOTANICS Glasgow Botanic Gardens, Wed 24 Jun–Sat 1 Aug, bardinthebotanics.co.uk
A fixture of the Glasgow summer, Bard in the Botanics is bringing what artistic director Gordon Barr calls ‘Lesser Spotted Shakespeare’ to the city's West End for 2015. His direction of Love’s Labour’s Lost is the first production of the play in Scotland for half a century, while Jennifer Dick directs the first Scottish professional version of Richard II. Alongside an adaptation of A Midsummer’s Night Dream and an updating of The Merchant of Venice, this year’s season shows the breadth of the company’s dynamism.
In recent years, BITB has been expanding – its shows now often tour beyond the Gardens – and take an increasingly imaginative approach to the scripts. The Merchant of Venice has been relocated to 1930s Germany, while Love’s Labour’s Lost's promenade format uses the Botanics ‘not just as a backdrop but almost as another character’.
‘We like to mix it up with new takes on popular titles,’ says Barr, ‘so a more “obscure” play like Love’s Labour’s Lost will play opposite Emily Reutlinger’s new feminist reimagining of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Creating a programme which has something for everyone . . . is really the core of our work.’ (Gareth K Vile)
CLASSIC COMEDY YER GRANNY Touring Scotland until Sat 4 Jul
‘I’m ashamed to say that I’d never heard of it,’ says adapting writer Douglas Maxwell of Roberto Cossa’s 1977 play La Nona, the most successful Argentinian stage show ever and the recipient of an all-star BBC adaptation in 1991 (starring Les Dawson, Liz Smith and Timothy Spall). Despite his reservations about doing the translation justice, director Graham McLaren’s suggestion that they shift it to a Scottish setting eventually persuaded him to take it on. ‘He talked about those Borderline Dario Fo’s, Davie Kane’s Dumbstruck and Joe Orton,’ says Maxwell, ‘and I certainly knew what they were. Those are the plays I grew up on.’
The result is is an out-and-out comedy, says
Maxwell, albeit one which gets pretty dark, about a 100-year-old grandmother (Gregor Fisher) who eats the family fish and chip shop out of business and is set to start on the family home. ‘It seemed very now,’ he says. ‘It’s about austerity,
poverty, greed, pride, family, ideals and the extremes of all those things. In the rehearsal room we talked a lot about hunger, the hunger for more that can become uncontrollable. It’s in everyone, everywhere, from chip shops to Buckingham Palace. Nana is a physical manifestation of that hunger run amuck.’ (David Pollock)
4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 93