n/a

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Glasgow

1980

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I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

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Musical

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by John Byrne; music by John Gould, lyrics by David Dearlove

Bush Theatre, London >>>

1984

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I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

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Play/Drama

4

3

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wonderful confusion is set in train by the accidental progress of an ancient handgun around the inhabitants of a pensione in Perugia in 1963.
- Susan Todd, New Statesman

Irvine, Ayrshire

1981

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I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

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Royal CourtTheatre, London >>>

1992

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Faber & Faber, London, 1992

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

True Drama

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6

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Based on the lives of Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde the painters. Colquhoun bumps into MacBryde at the Glasgow School of Art and they become instant friends and lovers. After graduating they move to London and set up in a bed sit they become friends with many of the "Bohemian" set such as Dylan Thomas. But drink was their problem and they spend a lot of time drinking or drunk. They get their first big exhibition and are feted the artistic circles and the press. It is the Second World War, Colquhoun enlists as an ambulance driver despite the fact he cannot drive. MacBryde is exempt war service on medical grounds. War service proves to be too much for Colquhoun and he is discharged on medical grounds. They spend some time living with a friend in Essex. Returning to their bed-sit they are evicted for non payment of rent. They descend even further into alcoholism. The owner of the gallery that put on their exhibitions dies and the new owner no longer wants to display their work. They have a hand to mouth existence sponging money from friends and living in a succession of grotty bed-sits.

Haymarket Theatre, Leicester, UK >>>

1985

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Samuel French, London, 1986

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

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Adaptation

9

5

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Original Playwright - Edward Ravenscroft

three beautiful wives, three ludicrous husbands and one overly ambitious, rapacious rake

Royal Court Theatre, London, EUR >>>

1982

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I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

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see Loveliest Night Of The Year

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Almeida Theatre, London >>>

1997

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I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

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Adaptation

12

2

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Original Playwright - Nikolai Gogol

Actors Theatre of Louisville, KY, USA >>>

1979-80

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Contact Actors Theatre of Louisville,

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Short Play

One Act

5

2

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part of The American Project: a compendium of short plays

A writer's first collision with tinsel-town machinery

Leicester

1985

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Samuel French, London, 1986

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

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Adaptation

9

4

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Original Playwright - Edward Ravenscroft

Period 1600 two aldermen with young wives argue about the qualities in a woman that make for a secure marriage before finding themselves cuckolded

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, UK >>>

1979

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Threads in "A Decade's Drama: Six Scottish Plays, Woodhouse, Todmorden, Lancashire. Cuttin' A Rug, Edinburgh, Salamander Press, 1982, 1980

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

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Play/Drama

6

4

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part of "The Slab Boys Trilogy" aka Cuttin' a Rug (London, 1982), Threads (London, 1980), broadcast as The Staffie

famous study of the lives of a group of Paisley boys working in the 'slab room' of a local carpet factory. Looks more closely at the theme of class tension on one hand and masculinity defined by violence on the other; but he also opens up a sense of beauty and romance, of pure sexual magic, as a redemptive force in the lives he describes. - McMillan, Scotsman.

Hampstead Theatre, London, EUR >>>

1979

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in "Plays and Players", May, London, 1979

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

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Play/Drama

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The everyday non-events of Caledonian Television circa 1963

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, UK >>>

2008

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I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

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Play/Drama

4

3

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part four of "The Slab Boys Story"

30 years on from when we last met him and Lucille in The Garden of Remembrance, Phil McCann faces the New Millennium with fortitude and good humour. The leading arts correspondent of the day is on her way to the far north to record a radio profile which Phil's confident will relaunch his career as a painter and establish him once and for all as a colossus of contemporary Caledonian culture. . .The only fly in the ointment is his new and much younger partner, Didi, a video-artist of some renown, who has just been added to the shortlist of nominees for the Turner Prize. Unfortunately, there are other flies buzzing about this particular ointment. . .

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, UK >>>

1978

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in 'on the argot', Scottish Society of Playwrights, Glasgow, 1982

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

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Play/Drama

6

2

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part one of "The Slab Boys Trilogy". Originally called Paisley Patterns.

from the fifties to the seventies, through Brylcream and Elvis to fluorescent underpants and hash cookies, catches the vibrant idiom of a whole generation. Powerful high farce out of the tension between Phil and Spanky's youthful wit and exuberance, and the dark undercurrent of sheer cruelty in their treatment of the Slab Romm wimp, Hector, and other victims.

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, UK >>>

1982

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Salamander Press, Edinburgh, 1982

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

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Play/Drama

4

1

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part three of "The Slab Boys Trilogy"

famous study of the lives of a group of Paisley boys working in the 'slab room' of a local carpet factory. The hero, Phil Cann, confronts the premature deaths of the trilogy's two great victims, poor Hector and his own mad mother, and evokes a fairly bleak image of youthful hopes aborted, or diverted into an absurd circus of hip 1970's culture, before proposing Phil's redemption through fatherhood and his true marriage to Lucille, always every Slab Boy's dream. - McMillan, Scotsman.

His Majesty's Theatre, Aberdeen

2006

National Theatre of Scotland

Faber, London, 2006

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Musical Play

Musical

8

5

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Twenty-three years on from their slightly dodgy, single foray into the charts, Scottish pop sensations The Majestics are mourning the loss of Big Jazza - their charismatic frontman - whose Ford Sierra just collided with a bus shelter via an unwelcome late-night kebab. With a Silver Jubilee tour booked, an album to cut and a TV documentary in the offing, can Jazza's brother, Danny, just washed up from New York with only four dollars to his name, save the day? It was 1987 when John Byrne's award-winning comedy-drama burst onto the nation's TV screens, searing itself into a generation's consciousness in the process. Now he has adapted his own original script, as the National Theatre of Scotland and His Majesty's Theatre, Aberdeen, bring Vinnie, Eddie Clockerty, Miss Toner, Suzi Kettles, Bomba et al to the stage for the very first time.

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, UK >>>

2004

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I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page

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Play/Drama

5

4

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Original Playwright - Anton Chekhov (Uncle Vanya)

How funny is Chekhov? In John Byrne's witty transposition of Uncle Vanya to north-east Scotland in 1964, the laughs come thick and fast. But, although Brian Cox lends his massive presence to the ineffectual, hops-producing Varick, the sheer ingenuity of Byrne's adaptation somewhat diminishes the pain of the original play. Byrne, as we know from Writer's Cramp, has a sharp eye for cultural pseudery. And he has most fun here with the character of Sandy Sheridan - the equivalent of Chekhov's Professor - a metropolitan art pundit who pens patronising pieces claiming "the landscape of Landseer is wasted on the Scots" and who, according to the envious Varick, has all the visual sophistication of Blind Pew. Byrne keeps up an endless supply of 1960s satirical jokes, with Varick's muddled mother poring over a slim volume entitled "The Rise and Fall of the Penis in 20th-Century Art." - Billington, Guardian

Calton Studios, Edinburgh

1977

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in "Plays and Players", December, London, 1977

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If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

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Play/Drama

3

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takes satirical swipes at Anglo-Scottish cultural pretensions.