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The Herald Scotland
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Val McDermid's new play has been 40 years in the making
The crime writer's long-time ambition to tackle the unsolved mystery over the death of 16th century English playwright and poet Christopher Marlowe is about to be realised at Pitlochry Festival Theatre, which has just been taken over by the Perthshire-born actor. Read more: McDermid sent Cumming her unperformed script for 'And Midnight Never Come' after plans to bring it to the stage of one of Edinburgh's best-known theatres were abandoned due to a lack of funding. However the play has been rebooted by Cumming in his first year as artistic director at Pitlochry, after agreeing to stage a special 'script-in-hand reading' ahead of his first season of full-scale productions in 2026. Alan Cumming is helping to bring Val McDermid's new play to the stage. (Image: Supplied) McDermid is working with director Philip Howard, former artistic director of the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, to bring to life her script, which will be performed at the Edinburgh International Book Festival the night after its Pitlochry premiere. And Midnight Never Come will focus on the run-up to the death of Marlowe, who was said to have been fatally stabbed in a guest house in Kent on May 30, 1593. Crime writer Val McDermid has sold more than 19 million books to date. (Image: PA) There have been centuries of debate and conflicting theories over Marlowe's death, including claims that he may have been killed over an involvement with espionage, was assassinated on the orders of Queen Elizabeth I, was targeted for his religious beliefs or was murdered by a former lover. McDermid, from Kirkcaldy in Fife, initially pursued a career as a journalist after studying English at Oxford University. She said: 'I was captivated by Marlowe as a writer when I was an undergraduate student. When I read up on what is known about his life I found it fascinating. "The more I read and discovered the more the version of his death seemed to be implausible. 'I came up with my own theory about what happened to him and that's what underpins the play, although I don't want to say any more about that theory. People will have to come and see it for themselves. 'When you are writing something that is rooted in the past you know certain things. It's about trying to come up with a story that makes sense with the facts that we know. That's what I've done with Marlowe. "My first attempts at this were more than 40 years ago. I just couldn't work out how to do it structurally and tell the story that I had in my head. I went back to it time and again over the years." McDermid has sold more than 19 million books and seen her work translated into more than 40 different languages since her first attempt at a novel when she was working as a trainee journalist in Devon. She recalled: 'My first attempt at a book was full of tortured relationships and all the big emotions – grief, rage, jealousy and love. It was truly terrible although I did finish it. 'But I also sent it to a friend of mine who was an actor and she said to me: 'I don't know much about books, but I think this would make a really good play.' 'I thought: 'That's easy. I'll just cross out the descriptions and leave in the speaking bits.' That's essentially what I did.' 'I wrote some extra scenes to cover the bits I'd crossed out and went to the local theatre. The director was very excited about it and said it would be perfect for a season of new plays. 'Completely by accident, I was a professionally performed playwright by the age of 23. 'I thought it was the start of something big and that I was going to be the new Harold Pinter, but it didn't work out that way.' Although McDermid's debut was adapted by the BBC, her career as a playwright was halted when was dropped by her agent 'after a couple of years of not making him any money.' The writer recalled: 'I just couldn't write any more plays because I didn't understand what I'd done right. The ambition and desire were there, but unfortunately skills and ability were not. Nowadays you can go off on a course and learn the nuts and bolts of your craft. But that wasn't really available back then. 'I just didn't know what I was supposed to be doing. I thought I should go off and do something that I understood how it worked. I had read a lot of crime fiction since I was about nine years old, so I thought I could maybe have a crack at a crime novel. 'At the time, in the early 1980s, the only British crime fiction that was around were village mysteries and police procedurals. I felt I didn't know enough about the police to write a convincing police procedural novel, so I got a bit stuck. 'What finally got me moving was when a friend of mine who had moved to America sent me a copy of Sara Paretsky's first novel, one of the early iterations of so-called new-wave feminist crime fiction. 'Her private eye character was a woman who had a brain and a sense of humour. She didn't rely on the guys to do the heavy lifting. When the going got tough she just got tougher. What I also liked about her novel was its strong sense of place. There was a sense that the story arose from the city of Chicago. It had a sense of social politics as well. That book really inspired me to get started.' McDermid's debut novel, Report for Murder, was published in 1987 and kick-started a career which has seen her write more than 50 books to date, and develop five separate series. One of the most recent, focusing on the detective Karen Pirie, is about to return to ITV for a second series this month, with Lauren Lyle returning to the lead role. McDermid's return to theatre work has emerged seven years after a foray into the lunchtime drama series A Play, A Pie and A Pint, with political comedy Margaret Saves Scotland, about a Yorkshire schoolgirl who returns from a holiday filled with a burning desire for Scottish independence. The experience of working on that show with director Marilyn Imrie persuaded McDermid to return to the idea of a play about the Marlowe mystery several decades after she had first started to work on it. McDermid's play, which depicts the last day of Marlowe's life as well as key events in his life, was snapped up by the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh and went into development for a full production, which was shelved after the theatre decided it was unaffordable. McDermid was in talks over a possible performance of her script at last year's book festival, which did not go ahead due to a programme organised to mark 200 years of James Hogg's novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Within weeks, though, Cumming had been unveiled as Pitlochry Festival Theatre's new artistic director. McDermid said: 'When Alan took over at Pitlochry I thought: 'I'll let Alan take a look at it.' 'He got very excited about it and said: 'This is fantastic, I love it, we must talk about it.' 'He said would talk to me about it at the Winter Words book festival earlier this year. 'The weekend went on and nothing had happened. I said to my partner: 'I think he was just being nice.' 'After the final event at the festival, he collared me and said: 'We have to talk now!' 'He told me he wanted to do a rehearsed reading of it. I said that the Edinburgh book festival had talked about doing that, but it hadn't actually happened. He suggested that it was done as a joint project. Two days later we were all in a Zoom call to sort out the details. It was amazing. 'My main hope now is that people out and enjoy it. I also hope that a producing theatre will have someone in the audience who thinks: 'We should be putting this on stage.' 'I know theatres have timetables, schedules and budgets. I'm not putting any pressure on anyone to do it. 'But I would love it if it was on at Pitlochry because there is such a great team there and it's a place where you can have a real day out. They've got a wonderful restaurant, you can eat in the restaurant and then go and see a play. 'Alan is a man of great passions, his work-rate is phenomenal, and he just makes things happen for people. He's the kind of person we need working in the arts at the moment.' McDermid's Marlowe play will finally see the light of day in Pitlochry and Edinburgh in the wake of her book interpreting the story of Lady Macbeth. She said: 'My idea of the perfect novel is one where you don't have to do any research at all because you already know everything you need to know. But that never happens. 'With historical stuff, it's a case of digging down, looking at all the available sources and working your way through them. It just takes a bit longer before you can get started on the writing. 'It does create more work when you write historical books, but when an idea roots itself in your head the only way you can get rid of it is to write it."
The Herald Scotland
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Vast cultural archive to be moved from Scotland to Poland
Demarco's collection, which spans more than 60 years, includes around 4500 paintings and drawings, as well as around a million photographs, books, posters, letters and catalogues. Read more: Demarco - who announced the relocation of his archive to coincide with his 95th birthday - has been a key figure in Edinburgh's cultural scene since the 1960s, when he was one of the founders of the Traverse Theatre and launched his own art gallery in the city. Joseph Beuys, Tadeusz Kantor, Marina Abramovic, Paul Neagu, and Rasa Todosijevic are among the artists he invited to perform and exhibit their work in Scotland for the first time. Richard Demarco has been forced to relocate his archive from the Summerhall arts centre in Edinburgh after more than a decade. (Image: Gordon Terris) Demarco is believed to have one of the biggest collections of material relating to Edinburgh's having attended or been involved in the city's annual cultural celebration every year since they were launched in 1947. He is said to have crossed the Iron Curtain dozens of times as part of his efforts to bring artists from across Europe to the Scottish capital. Demarco has announced an agreement with the Muzeum Sztuki, in the city of Lodz, where he was made an honorary citizen in 2008 in recognition of his prolonged support for Polish artists and culture. Demarco, who was born in Edinburgh, told The Herald he had made more than 40 trips to Poland since his first visit in 1968. He said: "I'm not disappointed that the archive is going to Poland. It isn't a Scottish cultural collection. It is a collection of European art. "I have been blessed by the Edinburgh Festival, which changed my life in 1947. It has never happened without me experiencing it. It was never enough for me to be a festivalgoer. I had to contribute to it." Although the majority of the collection will be leaving Scotland, a significant amount will be housed and displayed at a recently-revamped 19th century farm steading in East Lothian. Demarco is also working with tech entrepreneur George Mackintosh, who has been restoring Papple Steading, near Haddington, for the last five years into an agricultural heritage centre, holiday homes and events complex. Part of the Polish museum will be refurbished to house the Demarco Archive to ensure the collection can properly exhibited and studied there. It will also be collaborating with the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dunde and Papple Steading on a project to digitise the collection so it will be available to explore and study from anywhere in the world in future. Some of the Demarco Archive pre-dating 1995 has been in the care of the National Galleries of Scotland for years. It is due to be moved to a new cultural centre and visitor attraction on Edinburgh's waterfront in future, although the start of work on the project had been delayed indefinitely due to a lack of public funding. Most of Demarco's collection has been in storage or on display across 13 different rooms at the Edinburgh arts centre Summerhall for more than a decade. Demarco, who had been offered space for the archive by Summerhall founder Robert McDowell, launched a search for a new home for the majority of his collection last October, months after the complex was put up for sale. A luxury housebuilder has secured a deal to snap up the site, subject to planning permission being secured. Speaking last year, Demarco said: 'I've never actually owned a gallery or a theatre. I have somehow put on hundreds of exhibitions and stage productions in temporary spaces, but I have never secured a home in Edinburgh. "The archive was created in Edinburgh and the heart of it is the history of the Edinburgh Festival. But at the moment, I cannot see a space in Edinburgh that is going to welcome me.' Muzeum Sztuki director Daniel Muzyczuk said: 'On the occasion of Richard Demarco's 95th birthday, we celebrate a visionary curator whose life has been deeply intertwined with Polish art and culture. 'He has been a passionate advocate for Polish artists, tirelessly introducing their work to audiences across the UK and Europe. 'Demarco's commitment to fostering culture exchange has opened doors for painters, sculptors, and performance artists from Poland. His long-standing friendship with the Museum Sztuki has resulted in numerous collaborative projects. 'Through joint initiatives with the museum, he helped bring avant-garde Polish art into dialogue with Western European audiences. 'Over decades, Richard has supported emerging talents from Poland, ensuring their voices are heard on the international stage. 'As he turns 95, we honour Richard Demarco's remarkable legacy of solidarity, artistic vision, and profound connection to Poland.' Demarco said: 'It was of paramount importance to find such fitting new homes for the collection here in in Scotland and in Lodz. 'I extend great thanks to both teams for their commitment over the last few months to make this happen. 'I am extremely happy that scholars and students will be able to access the collection in person and online over the years ahead.' Mr Mackintosh said: 'Richard's father was born in Dunbar, in East Lothian, and he spent his childhood in the towns of Musselburgh and Portobello. 'Richard has been a vigorous advocate of the environment for decades. Richard has brought his work to this farm, at which we will celebrate 'art in agriculture' in future."
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.'
Scotsman
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Theatre reviews: The Mountaintop
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... The Mountaintop, Lyceum Theare, Edinburgh ★★★★★ Lear, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh ★★★★ When Katori Hall's breakthrough play The Mountaintop first appeared in London in 2009, Barack Obama had just been elected as the first black President of the United States; and if the young playwright struggled, at first, to find a US producer, it was perhaps because its sometimes apocalyptic tone seemed out of time, at that moment of hope. The Mountaintop | Mihaela Bodlovic Flash forward 16 years, though, to the age of Trump, and this brilliant, visionary and disturbing play could hardly seem more timely, as it imagines the last night on earth of mighty civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King, and a strange encounter between him and a hotel maid at the Lorraine Motel, Memphis; the place where King was shot dead, on his hotel balcony, on 4 April 1968. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Now, the play is being revived at the Lyceum in a challenging farewell show programmed by outgoing artistic director David Greig; and Rikki Henry's bold production rises to the occasion with a thrilling 95 minutes of theatre, bold, breathless, and sometimes terrifying. The Mountaintop | Mihaela Bodlovic As the play begins, Caleb Robert's Dr King is arriving back at his room in a thundering rainstorm, after a Memphis strike rally. Nervy and driven, and coughing with laryngitis, he huddles in a blanket, trying to pen a speech titled 'America is going to hell.' It's only when a pretty, flouncily-dressed maid called Camae arrives with his coffee that some light begins to fall on Hyemi Shin's high, heavily tilted hotel room set; yet as King begins to flirt with her, it soon becomes clear that their encounter is not following any ordinary route. With an unexpected authority, Shannon Hayes's brilliant Camae both laughs and giggles like any young girl meeting a hero, and looks past the routine sexual overtones of his chat to see a man both physically exhausted, and terrified by the constant death threats he receives. And as the thunder rolls, and Pippa Murphy's superb soundscape gathers momentum, she both challenges and comforts him, until he begins to realise that she is much more than a chambermaid, and that he is facing the moment he has feared for so long. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad It might be possible to argue with some aspects of Hall's handling of the play's final phase, which involves a comic phone chat with God (female, of course), and a lightning journey through the last 60 years of racial politics in the US. By the end, though, the show achieves a dark and stunning intensity, as we watch Caleb Roberts's complex, heartrending King being dragged unwillingly from life; not kicking and screaming, but - to the very last - shaping those visionary words of hope and freedom that ensure his legacy lives on, even in the worst of times. Lear | Tommy Ga-Ken Wan There's an equal darkness and intensity, too, in Ramesh Meyyappan's Lear, a wordless hour-long meditation on Shakespeare's great tragedy, commissioned by last month's Singapore International Festival of Arts, and produced by Raw Material, with the National Theatre of Scotland. Driven by a terrific score by David Paul Jones, and set on a dark stage strewn with sack-cloth and ashes by designer Anna Orton, this Lear features astonishing performances from Nicole Cooper, Amy Kennedy and Draya Maria as Lear's three daughters, dressed in dark red, scarlet and blue silk; and revolves around Ramesh Meyyappan's intense and heartbreaking central vision of Lear as a man accustomed to power, but now increasingly lost and demented. That this short show can convey so much in a brief hour, not only of the play itself but of 21st century responses to it, is a tremendous tribute to the quality of the cast, of the creative team, and of Orla O'Loughlin's immaculate, flowing direction; and of course, to Ramesh Meyyappan himself, performer and creator, and now surely Scotland's leading artist in the world of theatre that reaches beyond language, to touch our hearts and souls. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad
