Lovers of the Doric are in for a treat this week when a touring theatre company brings a play to their doorstep. The Splinters Theatre Company will be at Aboyne and New Deer with a drama called The Roup by Bob Adams. The story line is bitter sweet. For the old couple selling up the day of the roup is a sad one however, there is also plenty of fun - and a bit of love interest.
- The Press and Journal

A lecturer's double fixation with Herman Melville and with a young student, leads to a fantasy fusion of sex and guilt, comedy and pain.

Christopher Deans' play Another Space is a fast moving multi-character drama about the lives of young people from a variety of backgrounds. The play focuses on the various communications and identities (real and fabricated) that young people use in daily life and in the virtual environment. The title reflects a number of situations within the play: the freedom and danger of virtual contact; the struggle of an agoraphobic to leave her house; the trans-national communication made possible through the internet; and the cosmic event of a solar eclipse which frames the timeframe of the play. The play tracks the journey of numerous young people searching for new ways of being or expressing themselves. Teenage runaway Eve tries to make sense of her broken relationship with her mother by going online as a failing 40 year old mother. Her mysterious friend and co-resident in the homeless hostel, Viv, is leading a double life as a prostitute and attempting to cope with the reality of being pregnant at such a young age. Meanwhile Hannah, the agoraphobic, having been forced to leave the house due to a theft of her computer, begins to discover a real life friendship with Pip. Alongside these scene are comic interludes between virtual soul mates Monkey Boy and Monkey Girl who discover their kinship online and slowly inch towards an actual meeting. All the journeys beautifully reflect the awkwardness and exploration that form part of the teenage process of making sense of the world. The play is a challenging and varied piece that creates layered characters for a large number of young performers, tackling personal dilemmas within a complex and exciting framework."
Lorenzo Mele

A world premiere adapted from the novel by Christopher Brookmyre. Boiling a Frog is a dark, satirical, edge-of-your seat political thriller that sweeps through the corridors of power, up to its knees in spin. Jack Parlabane, an investigative journalist not afraid to bend the law for the sake of a good story, follows his nose as it leads him into a world of sleaze, conspiracy and murder. Scathingly truthful and worryingly believable Boiling a Frog unravels the world of PR, ambitious MSPs, corruption and the Catholic Church.

Here's a cheeky modern take on a classic of 18th century theatre that swaps the elegant interiors of Seville for down-market 21st century Benidorm. And the way Beaumarchais' densely packed language is replaced by a rip-roaring West of Scotland twang is pure dead brilliant. Based on The Barber of Seville, Christopher Deans' Cut to the Chase is aimed at youngsters. But I'll defy anyone over 20 not to enjoy the sheer pace and comedy of this show."
- Kenneth Speirs, The Mail on Sunday

Set in an unspecified Scottish town . . . Christopher Deans' new work Free Fall explores the effects of the now 25 year old right to buy" policy and how it has [resulted in] . . . pensioners being evicted from their family home as a result of not maintaining mortgage payments on their ex-council house . . . it will always find a forum which inspires and prompts topical discussion and Debate"
- Louisa McEwan, The Herald

The pope is dead. The race to replace him, led by a corrupt Scottish Cardinal, is on. Christopher Deans' play Smells and Bells . . . is a long, dark, bitter cry of rage against the attitude of the Catholic Church in Scotland to gay sexuality. Its thesis seems to be that the Catholic faith - with its powerful, sensuous imagery of pierced bodies, bleeding hearts, and flesh transfigured into spirit - has a way of penetrating with exceptional power, into the erotic imagination of vulnerable men, and then twisting it into a nightmare of denial, self-hatred and lies . . . It's immensely potent and evocative: but what it evokes is an atmosphere dictated by those who equate gay sex with sleaze and bad endings, now and Forever.
- Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman

No more beautiful image of the play could have been found. In the long closing suicidal speech, when Mister at last joins the safe majority and lies down beside the effigy of Nelson to become an effigy himself, Eveling draws the strands of imagery together in one of the finest pieces of contemporary dramatic poetry we have heard in a long while.
- Gavin Miller, The Listener

This play is a study of seven men, six gunners and an eighteen year old lance bombardier, trapped in a futile situation which drives the wildest of them to increasingly extreme subordination. It is Germany in 1954, a bitterly cold winter. The gun they guard is obsolete. The woeful events of the play are unfolded with biting irony. This isn't just a piece about falling out between lonely soldiers, or about a particular idiocy of cold war strategy. It is about a man who sees his own life as ludicrous and outworn because he has been placed in a situation so dehumanised that he can only react mockingly.
- Penelope Gilliatt, The Observer

Maclean, John, 1879-1923. "Song, pantomime, direct exhortation, uproarious and ribald parody are used to tell the bitter story."
- The Herald

If you Want to Know the Time was written for the Blair Peach Memorial Event and performed at the Royal Court Theatre on 15 July 1979. Blair Peach was a young school teacher from New Zealand who was allegedly beaten by police while taking part in a peaceful demonstration in Southall and died of head injuries. The demonstration was attempting to stop the National Front from marching through that predominantly Asian community.

Nails the old myth that left-wing theatre must necessarily be grey.
- Michael Billington, The Guardian

What can we learn from the past that can help us build a better Scotland today? "The latest skirmish in a continuing war against capitalism and the ills thereof ... full of vitality, humour, good songs and music, polemical overstatement and blistering home truths ..."
- Cordelia Olivier, The Guardian

Nails the old myth that left-wing theatre must necessarily be grey.
- Michael Billington, The Guardian

Nightclass showcases the formidable range of John McGrath's skills. Songs and agitprop are intercut deftly, often to ironic effect, with nuanced interplay between the five characters, the dialogue switching between sharp wit and painful revelation. Four lonely people drift into a night class on the English or British constitution. Each hopes that for a few quid a qualified expert will show them how that elusive monster holds the secrets to their plights and desperation. McGrath quickly has them relating to each other on the basis of rules as deep and unwritten as those of the notoriously elusive constitution itself. Their youngish, patronising lefty lecturer persuades them to fiddle the class numbers so that he will be paid. He tries and fails to get off with the young, grieving woman in between his attacks on the Monarchy and bogus Democracy. The lady wife of a local magistrate takes the hump and rats on him, precisely at the point that the others sense they've a lot they can learn from each other. The beauty of this piece lies in three things. There are the tensions between positions asserted and the nuances of how the interactions unfold. There is the craft with which it is tied together. There is the ending in which the characters, regretting again what might have been, wander off through the corridors of powerlessness. Nightclass is an excellent place to study and appreciate John McGrath's huge talents.
- Bob Tait, Reviewer and Critic

The idea for The Road to Mandalay came from the students in their first workshops with John [McGrath] and Liz [MacLennan]. But this is not a play that 'dumbs down' as many plays for children do. This play is also great fun for adults and communities. When I read the second and third drafts, I did, as a headteacher, have some anxieties on whether this was within their scope. It expects the very highest commitment and skill. But our students rose to the challenge and particularly after their workshops turned in performances that professional actors would be proud of. It remains a pivotal experience in their lives and mine.
- Dame Tamsyn Imison, Headteacher Hampstead School 1984-2000

Swings and Roundabouts may be different in style from previous productions but it has all the wit, perspicacity and political awareness of earlier 7:84 plays ... the play shows clearly that class can cause the people trapped in it's social conventions to be utterly miserable, whether they are wealthy or poor.
- Mary Brennan, The Herald

Nails the old myth that left-wing theatre must necessarily be grey.
- Michael Billington, The Guardian

armed soldiers and police on the street

The pope is dead. The race to replace him, led by a corrupt Scottish Cardinal, is on. Christopher Deans' play Smells and Bells . . . is a long, dark, bitter cry of rage against the attitude of the Catholic Church in Scotland to gay sexuality. Its thesis seems to be that the Catholic faith - with its powerful, sensuous imagery of pierced bodies, bleeding hearts, and flesh transfigured into spirit - has a way of penetrating with exceptional power, into the erotic imagination of vulnerable men, and then twisting it into a nightmare of denial, self-hatred and lies . . . It's immensely potent and evocative: but what it evokes is an atmosphere dictated by those who equate gay sex with sleaze and bad endings, now and Forever.
- Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman

No more beautiful image of the play could have been found. In the long closing suicidal speech, when Mister at last joins the safe majority and lies down beside the effigy of Nelson to become an effigy himself, Eveling draws the strands of imagery together in one of the finest pieces of contemporary dramatic poetry we have heard in a long while.
- Gavin Miller, The Listener

This play is a study of seven men, six gunners and an eighteen year old lance bombardier, trapped in a futile situation which drives the wildest of them to increasingly extreme subordination. It is Germany in 1954, a bitterly cold winter. The gun they guard is obsolete. The woeful events of the play are unfolded with biting irony. This isn't just a piece about falling out between lonely soldiers, or about a particular idiocy of cold war strategy. It is about a man who sees his own life as ludicrous and outworn because he has been placed in a situation so dehumanised that he can only react mockingly.
- Penelope Gilliatt, The Observer

Maclean, John, 1879-1923. "Song, pantomime, direct exhortation, uproarious and ribald parody are used to tell the bitter story."
- The Herald

If you Want to Know the Time was written for the Blair Peach Memorial Event and performed at the Royal Court Theatre on 15 July 1979. Blair Peach was a young school teacher from New Zealand who was allegedly beaten by police while taking part in a peaceful demonstration in Southall and died of head injuries. The demonstration was attempting to stop the National Front from marching through that predominantly Asian community.

Nails the old myth that left-wing theatre must necessarily be grey.
- Michael Billington, The Guardian

What can we learn from the past that can help us build a better Scotland today? "The latest skirmish in a continuing war against capitalism and the ills thereof ... full of vitality, humour, good songs and music, polemical overstatement and blistering home truths ..."
- Cordelia Olivier, The Guardian

Nails the old myth that left-wing theatre must necessarily be grey.
- Michael Billington, The Guardian

Nightclass showcases the formidable range of John McGrath's skills. Songs and agitprop are intercut deftly, often to ironic effect, with nuanced interplay between the five characters, the dialogue switching between sharp wit and painful revelation. Four lonely people drift into a night class on the English or British constitution. Each hopes that for a few quid a qualified expert will show them how that elusive monster holds the secrets to their plights and desperation. McGrath quickly has them relating to each other on the basis of rules as deep and unwritten as those of the notoriously elusive constitution itself. Their youngish, patronising lefty lecturer persuades them to fiddle the class numbers so that he will be paid. He tries and fails to get off with the young, grieving woman in between his attacks on the Monarchy and bogus Democracy. The lady wife of a local magistrate takes the hump and rats on him, precisely at the point that the others sense they've a lot they can learn from each other. The beauty of this piece lies in three things. There are the tensions between positions asserted and the nuances of how the interactions unfold. There is the craft with which it is tied together. There is the ending in which the characters, regretting again what might have been, wander off through the corridors of powerlessness. Nightclass is an excellent place to study and appreciate John McGrath's huge talents.
- Bob Tait, Reviewer and Critic

The idea for The Road to Mandalay came from the students in their first workshops with John [McGrath] and Liz [MacLennan]. But this is not a play that 'dumbs down' as many plays for children do. This play is also great fun for adults and communities. When I read the second and third drafts, I did, as a headteacher, have some anxieties on whether this was within their scope. It expects the very highest commitment and skill. But our students rose to the challenge and particularly after their workshops turned in performances that professional actors would be proud of. It remains a pivotal experience in their lives and mine.
- Dame Tamsyn Imison, Headteacher Hampstead School 1984-2000

Swings and Roundabouts may be different in style from previous productions but it has all the wit, perspicacity and political awareness of earlier 7:84 plays ... the play shows clearly that class can cause the people trapped in it's social conventions to be utterly miserable, whether they are wealthy or poor.
- Mary Brennan, The Herald

Nails the old myth that left-wing theatre must necessarily be grey.
- Michael Billington, The Guardian

armed soldiers and police on the street

When his friend is stabbed, a young lad from a housing scheme falls in with a gang. The terrible revenge he takes at random brings disaster on himself and the family of his victim.

Inside this bubble lives Tuscan, who as a baby survived an industrial accident which removed all his natural immunities, and condemned him to a sterile life as the bubble boy of the title. Now 17, he is posing enormous problems for the research team who look after him. The headlines have died away, the glamour has faded, hopes of a cure have dwindled, and the boy is now rebellious. In the short length of the play Sue Glover sketches with considerable skill many of the issues raised by the boy - industry's indifference to its casualties, news values, the compromising of ethical standards, and the responsibilities and limits of freedom.
- Trevor Griffiths, The Scotsman 1981

Sacred Hearts is not what you expect from the title - thank God for that. It's about five prostitutes who occupy the local church to protest about their conditions, especially police indifference to the predations of a serial killer. Sue Glover's new play is based on a prostitutes' strike in Lyons in 1975, the year of the Yorkshire Ripper's first murder. . .The girls take possession of the Church, and out come the fags and the wine. They are safe, looked after by the priest and the ambivalent caretaker, "God's House belongs to everyone. Or does it? Despite the sharp Glaswegian patter, these words always sound sinister. The play reveals the precariousness of their existence and hypocrisy of society's attitudes to them, the dangers they run and the risks they take.
- Joy Hendry, The Guardian 1994

Two short plays in the Shetland dialect written for schoolchildren - Suspeecion and Da Lassies o the Haaf Grunay.

A gothic Victorian promenade show through the secret backstage spaces of the Citizens Theatre. Out of the shadows comes a motley crew of sopranos, hoofers, chorines and wig-masters. They tell a haunting, mournful and darkly comic tale of yet another chorus girl burning to death beneath the stage while the show carried on above her head. Can somebody put a stop to these incidents? Will there be a bloodthirsty coup or a red velvet revolution? The management are literally getting away with murder. . .Sub Rosa has been created especially for the Citizens by David Leddy, who has been described as a 'theatrical maverick' (Financial Times), 'one of the most interesting dramatic writers on the Scottish scene' (Scotsman) and 'the rising star of Scottish theatre' (Observer). The promenade show will take an audience of just 15 people through the secret, backstage areas of the theatre.

A highly original yet thoroughly accessible insight into what it means to be young, Asian and British. Filled with the powerful and contradictory emotions of adolescence, Kaahini is brightly coloured, full of warmth and feeling, and shot through with the darker threads of frustration and anger at the inflexible and inexplicable adult world. This play, for all its seemingly unfamiliar Asian context, speaks directly to the widest possible audience - anyone with a mother, father, son, daughter, friend or lover will find much to challenge and inspire them here. " . . . 'Esha' is a 16-year-old 'boy' who is obsessive about his fitness, dreaming of scoring the winning goal in the looming schools' cup final. Esha, however, is actually a girl raised as a male by her parents. She is forced to confront her identity and sexuality when her periods start and she begins to have feelings for her best friend, Farooq. By taking on the female identity of 'Kaahini', she takes tentative steps toward unravelling her 'true' self. To do so, the characters who surround her must also face some uncomfortable truths about themselves.

Note to self - You are dying' .As a young man's depression turns to despair, suicide seems the only way out - the only way to take control . . . In spite of the bleakness of its subject, Sunburst Finish is filled with strong and vibrant voices, a rich mosaic of music, wit, warmth, insight, feeling, and a remarkable lack of sentimentality. The central character's struggle to come to terms with himself and the world around him is one that all young (and not so young) people will relate strongly to.

As de Quincey scribbles away in abject poverty, buoyed up by narcotic sustenance, desperately trying to meet deadlines for Blackwood his publisher, he is accompanied by a pickpocket and simpleton, Willy. The brilliant loquacious addict and the affably childish dimwit are drawn together by circumstance and a mutual need. The wonderful mastery of image in the author's work is reflected in the dialogue.
Robert Gore Langton

Note to self - You are dying' .As a young man's depression turns to despair, suicide seems the only way out - the only way to take control . . . In spite of the bleakness of its subject, Sunburst Finish is filled with strong and vibrant voices, a rich mosaic of music, wit, warmth, insight, feeling, and a remarkable lack of sentimentality. The central character's struggle to come to terms with himself and the world around him is one that all young (and not so young) people will relate strongly to.

exploring the emotions which fuel and surround ambition, and the conflict between party politics and single-issue activism.

The Salt Wound ushers in not only the monumental sea but also an almost oppressive awareness of a close-knit fishing community with all its orthodoxies, traditions and celebrations. Greenhorn does a convincing job of taking the classical passions of Greek tragedy and transposing them to a modern setting. Everyone is right and wrong. No-one can do anything about it ... It holds an audience gripped.
- The Herald

"David Greig's fine adaptation produces a clarity of narrative and a simple, resonant language that renders the epic accessible."
Robert Thompson, Herald

"As a dramatist, Tom McGrath's great strength is to pare things down to the fewest possible words, the sparsest settings, only the most elemental action. His extraordinary stroke with Electra is to seize on the brevities of Greek tragedy and whittle them down even further. The result: a lethal little piece, bristling with menacing meanings and consequences, representing a total minefield. We watch in horror as the characters blunder through it. His Electra is self-righteously correct, mad and disastrous. His Orestes, rather than god-enlightened, is a hesitant teenager blinded by a vision of new beginnings. All the characters have a dubious mixture of self-deluding, self-interested and high-minded motives. All are fatally credulous, believing messengers and messages even less reliably credentialed than CNN, Fox or the BBC. This piece zings with more compressed meaning than many ten times its length. It resonates powerfully for all of us watching similar stories unfolding in the Middle East, Congo, Rwanda, the USA and Northern Ireland."
Bob Tait, theatre reviewer and literary critic

Part biographical drama, part-staging of some of Stan and Ollie's most fondly remembered cinema scenes. A charming theatrical work.

A partially autobiographical piece which arose out of the stoke he suffered in 2003, McGrath has put himself in the picture via the character of sam McCredie, a troublesome old bugger who'll go anything but gently into the good night.

A world of beleaguered single parents and adolescent fears and friendships is reflected in the dark mirror of Sally's experience on her first real date. The garish glamour and hectic motion of the fairground and the Waltzer itself provide a perfect setting for this multi-faceted depiction of the thrills and spills of a teenager's first steps towards the adult world. Originally written for radio, The Waltzer draws much of its power and point from the complex interaction between past and present events, inner monologue and intercut dialogue.

Blooded is a rites of passage play about four sixteen year old girls coming to terms with the loss of childhood and its innocence. The once close bonds between the girls unravel, at times humourously and at times tragically. Wright's vivid portrayal of growing up makes compelling reading.

Sue Glover's short play is an absorbing account which not only offers colourful vignettes of Mackintosh and Eardley's quite different lives and styles of work but also makes cogent parallels with the work of women artists today . . .By focusing on fascinating personal details Glover abstracts individual experiences to the general, thus addressing the marginalisation of women artists with sweeping effective strokes.
- Sara Villiers, The Herald

A riveting and magical piece of theatre that takes as its premise the legend of the Silkies, a race of seals who are known to come ashore, take on human form, marry unsuspecting humans, bear them children and then go back to the sea. In Sue Glover's wonderful interpretation of this folk-story we are transported, body and soul to a fishing community steeped in such superstitions.
- The London Fringe

set in the 1870;s the play is a mysterious and atmospheric Gothic tale, dealing with sex, death and public health. "As brothels and old-time religion nestle up in the back streets, auld reekie's well-heeled self image is chillingly blighted by death and disease. Obvious gothic antecedents here are Stevenson and Conan Doyle, but there are nods too at David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick. In its brutal depiction of how sexual plague decimates societies great and small, however, it shows that even Trainspotting's darker roots go way back."
- Neil Cooper, The Herald

This fine, subtle play allows us to see those things not appreciated by the luckless characters, and perhaps to understand and forgive. The work uses a fantasy situation to dissect reality in a way realism never could, offering a dissection of the inadaquacy if the emotional vocabulary in use in Scotland and voicing a protest against those responsible for that situation. And if it is set in Scotland its resonances can be felt far beyond.
- Joseph Farrell, literary critic

People are forever claiming to be presenting undiscovered wee gems on the Fringe, but this really is an undiscovered wee gem. James Smith was a highly popular playwright in 19th-century Edinburgh, since sunk into unforgiving oblivion; but this completely delightful short comic monologue, exhumed and adapted by Donald Campbell, fully deserves the daylight. Nancy Sleekit is no woman to meddle with. She regales us, in rich and expressive Scots, with tales of her three husbands, their manifold failings and their, um, untimely ends. Along the way we get wonderful Hogarthian cameos of the low life of Auld Reekie, acerbic asides that would wither a stone, and a feisty proto-feminism.
- Catherine Lockerbie, The Scotsman

Describes the life of the poet Robert Burns, as seen through the eyes of his wife Jean Armour. "This is a splendid play - a rich tapestry of pointed dialogue blended with beautiful soliloquies from Jean Armour and embellished with Burns' own poetry and song. The subtlety of Campbell's style is also most impressive. At no point does he stress any particular line. Instead, he allows the contradictions that seem to have been inherent in Burns' personality to manifest themselves in front of the key women who knew him - and at the end of the day he invites us, the audience to judge the man for ourselves - assuming, of course, we have the nerve to."
- Ian Mowat, The Herald

"John Clifford uses the story of St. Lucy who, in Syracuse in 300 AD is said to have put out her eyes rather than submit to a Roman general, as a jumping off point in all kinds of directions . . . Clifford looks at the way self-deception, ambition and manipulation are used by the Church to secure their position 'at a time of darkness before the red dawn'. And he goes on to deal with the warmongers, the futility of conflict and the ability of the human spirit to surmount impossible odds, ending on a high note of forgiving optimism."
- Richard Mowe, Theatre Scene

Shows in a naturalistic setting, but with poetic resonances, a father son tension in an imprisoning, middle class social setting. "In Stewart Conn's play The Aquarium a woman asks, 'What's the use of loving someone if you don't show it?' This is the key to the bitter conflict between father and son that Conn so vividly presents. Their hostility does not stem from a lack of affection, but from their inability to express goodwill towards each other. Their relationship steeped in rancour . . . neither is prepared to understand the other, or to make the gesture that would bring them closer together."
- Allen Wright, The Scotsman

Focuses on a Scots mercenary under trial in an African state, and on his uncomprehending family and girl, at home; mixing black comedy with social comment and bemoaning with corrosion and loss of human life. "Play Donkey centres on a young Scottish mercenary awaiting an 'exemplary' trial in 'some emergent African state'. Like a child's game of cat's cradle, it links his destiny with some of those most closely affected by it - his bewildered parents, two girls, the clever London lawyer who flies out to plead his cause, knowing it is already as good as lost. Conn's strength is that he refuses to take sides . . . Laughter is written into the play, and deftly so. It is laughter only to stop you weeping."
- Cordelia Oliver, The Guardian

"Janet is so resolutely upbeat, so adept at finding the bright side, that any of life's disappointments, become material for her sharp wit. Her jokes are of the if-you-don't-laugh-you'll-cry variety and the play imperceptibly shifts tone, from hilarious observations to a darker exposition. Although Janet berates herself for 'being maudling' Downie's play never lapses into sentimental pathos. Subtly emotive, this is a beautifully observed piece, played with great warmth and assurance by the writer."
- Guardian

"The most eye catching aspect of Downie's play is its capacity, recalling O'Casey, to portray the life of a colourful community. The work, which eschews facile sentimentality, gives voice to a wealth of striking characters and is a gripping and moving one."
- The Scotsman

Premiered at the Arches Theatre, Glasgow in May 2005, these monologues reflect a growing interest in the theme of confession and the subject of other people's lives in contemporary drama and television, including the so-called 'reality' shows which abound in today's programme schedules. In a live context the experience of direct one to one contact can be alarming and exhilarating by turns. Funny, moving, disturbing and challenging, these monologues will be of interest to actors in search of an audition piece as well as directors on the lookout for a new and highly flexible way of making theatre. - Hugh Hodgart, Head of Acting RSAMD