Latest news with #DouglasMaxwell
The Guardian
21 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Man's Best Friend review – lockdown, loneliness and a pack of cute canines
A few blocks down the road on Argyle Street, a stall is promoting conspiracy theories about AstraZeneca. Every side is pasted with neurotic headlines misinforming passersby about vaccines. It is an odd, not to mention dangerous, throwback to the pandemic. So, too, in its own benign way, is Douglas Maxwell's play. It is not just that Man's Best Friend concerns a lockdown-era bereavement, a hospital stay in isolation and a funeral on Zoom. It is also that its themes are steeped in those strange months when it felt we had been plucked out of time. Maxwell evokes the days when past and future were denied us. There is clapping for the NHS, a new moment of neighbourliness and an urge to yell out the names of those we have lost. More than that, there is a sense of rootlessness and irresolution. A world in limbo. It is apparent from the start that something is awry with Ronnie. Performed with storytelling panache by Jordan Young, he is a man who cannot settle. Despite a cheery disposition, an invigorating job as a dog walker and a satirical eye for the rituals of outdoor life, he is out of sorts. He is not yet an emergency case (he has based his Zen meditation techniques on an advert for Center Parcs), but nor is he at ease. Thus, he walks with Albert, Fury, Carlos, Coriander and Rex around the embracing curves of Becky Minto's plank-lined set, as Grant Anderson's lighting shifts from pale dawn to fiery dusk, Ross Collins's cute canine illustrations come and go, and Maxwell's monologue grows from lighthearted to maudlin. Beyond the easy comedy, it is a play stalked by death and a yearning for release. First seen in 2022 in the lunchtime series A Play, a Pie and a Pint and now restaged by Jemima Levick in a handsome 80-minute production, it is vivid and touching. But it is also not quite of this time. For all Maxwell's perceptivity about loneliness, loss and dogs, and for all Young's vulnerability and charm, the world of Man's Best Friend is neither close enough nor far away enough to hit where it hurts. At Tron theatre, Glasgow, until 12 July; then touring, 3–27 September
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Scotsman
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Theatre reviews: Man's Best Friend The Inquisitor
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Man's Best Friend, Tron Theatre, Glasgow ★★★★ The Inquisitor, Oran Mor, Glasgow ★★★★ The Croft, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh ★★★ It's a truth universally acknowledged that during the pandemic, the relationship between people and their pets gained a whole new significance and intensity. I'm not sure, though, that that inflexion-point in human-pet relations had ever been celebrated in theatre, until the moment in 2022 when Douglas Maxwell's monologue Man's Best Friend first appeared at A Play, A Pie, and A Pint. Jordan Young in Man's Best Friend | Mihaela Bodlovic The monologue tells the story of Ronnie, who, after the tragic loss of his wife, and a decision to walk away from his job, finds himself - as the world opens up again - working as a dog-walker to five rowdy canine charges, four of them owned by his Glasgow neighbours. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Now Ronnie reappears - at the Tron and on tour - in an expanded 80 minute version of the play, directed by Jemima Levick, and performed by Scotsquad star Jordan Young; and three years on, Man's Best Friend emerges as an even more powerful response to a moment in history that changed so many lives, and left unresolved pain in so many hearts. In this version, the show receives a slightly more elaborate staging, courtesy of designer Becky Minto and lighting designer Grant Anderson. In truth, though, it hardly needs them, so clearly does the play's strength lie in Douglas Maxwell's writing - often hilariously funny, yet also profound, and sometimes richly poetic - and in the performance at the centre of the show. In this version, Young takes centre stage as a fine tragi-comic actor at the absolute height of his powers; younger than Jonathan Watson's original Ronnie, but all the more poignantly lost for that - until the play's pivotal moment, when his own dog leads him towards s shocking discovery that, at last, begins to awaken him from the long sleep of grief. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad This week's final spring season Play, Pie and Pint show is likewise a profound and thoughtful monologue; but in Peter Arnott's The Inquisitor - a 2007 play restaged to mark Arnott's 40th anniversary as a playwright - the speaker is not alone. He is an investigator conducting a final interview with a man accused of terrorism; but he finds that his interviewee will not speak, and sits in silence throughout the encounter. The effect is to create a monologue in which the speaker - powerfully played by Tom McGovern - spends an all but fruitless hour trying to bring his interviewee (an eloquently silent Michael Guest) back from his exalted commitment to a martyr's death, to the compromised, messy yet magical stuff of ordinary human life. McGovern's style, in making these arguments, is deliberately quixotic, and a shade hyperactive, as if he barely trusts Arnott's powerful words to carry the weight of the play. Carry it they do, though; to a conclusion that has only become more telling, as definitions of terrorism and hate crime grow ever more far-reaching, and the morality of those in power ever more compromised, and contested. The Croft | Contributed There's no such gravitas, alas, about Ali Milles's touring play The Croft, at the Festival Theatre, which takes a potentially powerful drama about love between women across three generations - all connected to a remote seaside croft in the western Highlands - and makes the fundamental mistake of trying to turn it into a horror movie. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad An impressive cast give the show their best shot, with Gracie Follows and Caroline Harker as lovers Laura and Suzanne, and Liza Goddard as 19th century crofter Enid, all turning in bold performances. In the end, through, a dramatic script has to play to its strengths; and here, that strength lies in the portrayal of brave women trying to defy patriarchal thinking down the ages, rather than in the cheap suggestion of some nameless supernatural evil, lurking in the very stones of the place.
Scotsman
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Playwright Douglas Maxwell on 25 years of hits, from Our Bad Magnet to So Young
With two of his acclaimed plays being restaged this year, Douglas Maxwell reflects on a quarter of a century spent working in and for Scotland. Interview by Joyce McMillan Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Douglas Maxwell can remember the day – almost 30 years ago now – when he realised that he could become a playwright. He had loved working on theatre shows at school in Girvan, he had played in bands, and as a student at Stirling University in the early 1990s he had co-founded the Stirling University Musical Theatre Society. It was in his final year, though, that he was fiddling around with a script in his room one day when a sudden thought hit him. 'Wait a minute,' he said to himself, 'some people actually do this for a job.' And from that moment, through good times and bad, his fate was sealed; as he launched himself on a career that has seen more than 40 Douglas Maxwell plays and adaptations produced in Scotland since 2000. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad His career has also led, over the last two years, to Maxwell's unique achievement in winning the Best New Play category two years running at the annual Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland. In 2024, Maxwell won for his remarkable double monologue The Sheriff Of Kalamaki, at A Play, A Pie and A Pint; and this month, he took the prize again for his 2024 Fringe hit So Young, a superbly well made four-handed drama, staged at the Traverse Theatre last August, about the reaction of a midlife Glasgow couple when their recently widowed friend suddenly acquires a new girlfriend 25 years his junior. Douglas Maxwell 'I think I graduated into one of the very good times for Scottish playwriting,' says Maxwell, who emerged from university in 1995, and began to follow in the footsteps of the outstanding generations of Scottish playwrights who emerged from the Traverse Theatre, and later the Tron, in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. 'There were so many great role models around,' he says. 'David Greig, Chris Hannan, David Harrower, so many more – wherever I looked, whatever I wanted to do, there was always someone there who could say – yes, I found a way to do that, and so can you.' His first play Our Bad Magnet, about teenage boys growing up in Girvan, premiered at the Tron in 2000; and since then the vast majority of Maxwell's plays have been produced by theatre companies in Scotland. 'Because of all the pressures in theatre today,' says Maxwell, 'most playwrights feel compelled to develop their work in other directions as well. They start to write for television or film, or go into directing, and end up running a theatre for ten years, as David Greig has just done at the Lyceum. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Sign up to our FREE Arts & Culture newsletter at 'But for more than 25 years now, I've just had this one string to my bow, which is writing plays for theatre, mainly here in Scotland. And I don't honestly want to do anything else.' The good news for Maxwell fans is that two of his recent plays are about to reappear on Scotland's stages. His 2024 CATS winner So Young – co-produced by the Citizens' Theatre and Glasgow-based touring company Raw Material – will form part of the Citizens' exciting reopening season this autumn. And this weekend, the Tron Theatre opens a new summer production of his 2022 Play, Pie, and Pint monologue Man's Best Friend, an acclaimed solo drama which notes the extraordinary role pets played in so many lives during lockdown, and revolves around the character of Ronnie, originally played by Jonathan Watson, a recently widowed man in Glasgow who develops a half-hearted career as a dog-walker, after everything else in his life goes wrong. This time around, Ronnie will be played by Jordan Young, much-loved star of River City, Scotsquad and the annual Edinburgh pantomime. 'Jordan's a younger actor,' says Maxwell, 'which brings a slightly different energy to the story. And what I particularly love is that he's an actor who really can shift from comedy to real tragedy in a single sentence. That absolutely suits my work down to the ground, because my plays are always funny, and always tragic.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Maxwell turned 50 last year, and lives in Glasgow's south side with his wife Caroline Newall, artistic development director at the National Theatre of Scotland, and their two daughters. And Maxwell does have one extra string to his professional bow as a teacher of playwriting. His workshops and playwriting courses are legendary, and he loves the work so much that he also reads many scripts sent to him by young writers for free, simply as a way of helping them along. His own playwriting, though, remains his main preoccupation, as he mulls over possible new projects for next year, and nurses Man's Best Friend and So Young towards their new stagings. 'Both of these plays come out of the lockdown experience, really,' says Maxwell. 'And both of them involve characters who are being asked or expected to 'move on', but who can't, because they haven't really had a chance to mourn. I'm asking what happens if you haven't had a chance to mark a death, or to remember a life, in the way that we should remember and mourn, as a social act. I think a lot of people are still carrying those scars from the pandemic; and in theatre, we can at least come together to ask that question, and to recognise that pain, before we try to turn towards the future.'
Scotsman
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Playwright Douglas Maxwell on 25 years of hits, from My Bad Magnet to So Young
With two of his acclaimed plays being restaged this year, Douglas Maxwell reflects on a quarter of a century spent working in and for Scotland. Interview by Joyce McMillan Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Douglas Maxwell can remember the day – almost 30 years ago now – when he realised that he could become a playwright. He had loved working on theatre shows at school in Girvan, he had played in bands, and as a student at Stirling University in the early 1990s he had co-founded the Stirling University Musical Theatre Society. It was in his final year, though, that he was fiddling around with a script in his room one day when a sudden thought hit him. 'Wait a minute,' he said to himself, 'some people actually do this for a job.' And from that moment, through good times and bad, his fate was sealed; as he launched himself on a career that has seen more than 40 Douglas Maxwell plays and adaptations produced in Scotland since 2000. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad His career has also led, over the last two years, to Maxwell's unique achievement in winning the Best New Play category two years running at the annual Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland. In 2024, Maxwell won for his remarkable double monologue The Sheriff Of Kalamaki, at A Play, A Pie and A Pint; and this month, he took the prize again for his 2024 Fringe hit So Young, a superbly well made four-handed drama, staged at the Traverse Theatre last August, about the reaction of a midlife Glasgow couple when their recently widowed friend suddenly acquires a new girlfriend 25 years his junior. Douglas Maxwell 'I think I graduated into one of the very good times for Scottish playwriting,' says Maxwell, who emerged from university in 1995, and began to follow in the footsteps of the outstanding generations of Scottish playwrights who emerged from the Traverse Theatre, and later the Tron, in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. 'There were so many great role models around,' he says. 'David Greig, Chris Hannan, David Harrower, so many more – wherever I looked, whatever I wanted to do, there was always someone there who could say – yes, I found a way to do that, and so can you.' His first play Our Bad Magnet, about teenage boys growing up in Girvan, premiered at the Tron in 2000; and since then the vast majority of Maxwell's plays have been produced by theatre companies in Scotland. 'Because of all the pressures in theatre today,' says Maxwell, 'most playwrights feel compelled to develop their work in other directions as well. They start to write for television or film, or go into directing, and end up running a theatre for ten years, as David Greig has just done at the Lyceum. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Sign up to our FREE Arts & Culture newsletter at 'But for more than 25 years now, I've just had this one string to my bow, which is writing plays for theatre, mainly here in Scotland. And I don't honestly want to do anything else.' The good news for Maxwell fans is that two of his recent plays are about to reappear on Scotland's stages. His 2024 CATS winner So Young – co-produced by the Citizens' Theatre and Glasgow-based touring company Raw Material – will form part of the Citizens' exciting reopening season this autumn. And this weekend, the Tron Theatre opens a new summer production of his 2022 Play, Pie, and Pint monologue Man's Best Friend, an acclaimed solo drama which notes the extraordinary role pets played in so many lives during lockdown, and revolves around the character of Ronnie, originally played by Jonathan Watson, a recently widowed man in Glasgow who develops a half-hearted career as a dog-walker, after everything else in his life goes wrong. This time around, Ronnie will be played by Jordan Young, much-loved star of River City, Scotsquad and the annual Edinburgh pantomime. 'Jordan's a younger actor,' says Maxwell, 'which brings a slightly different energy to the story. And what I particularly love is that he's an actor who really can shift from comedy to real tragedy in a single sentence. That absolutely suits my work down to the ground, because my plays are always funny, and always tragic.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Maxwell turned 50 last year, and lives in Glasgow's south side with his wife Caroline Newall, artistic development director at the National Theatre of Scotland, and their two daughters. And Maxwell does have one extra string to his professional bow as a teacher of playwriting. His workshops and playwriting courses are legendary, and he loves the work so much that he also reads many scripts sent to him by young writers for free, simply as a way of helping them along. His own playwriting, though, remains his main preoccupation, as he mulls over possible new projects for next year, and nurses Man's Best Friend and So Young towards their new stagings. 'Both of these plays come out of the lockdown experience, really,' says Maxwell. 'And both of them involve characters who are being asked or expected to 'move on', but who can't, because they haven't really had a chance to mourn. I'm asking what happens if you haven't had a chance to mark a death, or to remember a life, in the way that we should remember and mourn, as a social act. I think a lot of people are still carrying those scars from the pandemic; and in theatre, we can at least come together to ask that question, and to recognise that pain, before we try to turn towards the future.'
