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

"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

"An appealing mixture of comedy and pathos that straddles continents as well as emotions. Intriguing that Anne Downie has taken individual notions of independence and co-dependence and used them as a metaphor for a country forever on the cusp. The extended routine on hormone replacement therapy is priceless!"
- The Herald

"One of the play's great strengths is that it offers a fairly serious critique of the bingo phenomenon without discounting the powerful reasons why people with little money, and less choice about how to spend their leisure, play the game - the escapism, the cosy atmosphere, the human contact, the combination of mild excitement with an absolute freedom from the stress of decision making. All the characters are in some sense 'Waiting on One' - waiting for the one number, the one stroke of fate, the job, the loving touch, the new grandchild; the bingo game seen as a metaphor for their habit of powerlessness. Intriguing and effective theatre, pulling together the elements of character, dialogue, storyline and human observation that are essential to a reassessment of an important area of working class experience."
- The Guardian

"Witchcraft is in the news again, but there are no forced contemporary parallels. It is a Gothic tale, the telling of which has that indispensable element of insider sincerity. Ms Downie is neither an ironist nor someone looking on the characters and their doings from above. She is motivated by the same fascination with the enigmatic figure of Janet Douglas that gripped 17th Century Glasgow. Her play is as neat a piece of storytelling theatre as could be wished."
- The Scotsman

"It can be no easy thing to find yourself, as travelling folk in Scotland long have, simultaneously the repository of conventional people's romanticism and the focus of their dark fears. It takes a real dramatist like Anne Downie, with her rich, enchanting and moving new play The Yellow On the Broom to give full expression to both aspects. The lyrical lilt, the variety and vividness of character and scene make for memorable theatre."
- The Scotsman

"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

"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

'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

Donald Campbell's powerful two-act play is based, he tells us, on history. In 1876 six fishers from Clyth, in Caithness, were lost, leaving five widows and twenty-six children in a state of acute poverty. Out of that plain and terrible history Mr Campbell has made a play that may be expected to grip the attention of an audience, not only through pity and terror (for it is not a tragedy so much as the story of how strong-minded people, and especially women, reacted to calamity), but through a simple story enacted in a straightforward way, a matter of fact heightened by skilful fiction ... Placed within a context of their everyday life, the widows' story is likely to be almost unbearably moving. But it is true: those widows had to bear it.
- Robert Garioch, Lines Review

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

"Arnott's fascinating play questions the morality of Britain's spies and the spooky underworld of intelligence agents. Ever since the Iraq war, David Kelly's suicide and that deceptive dossier about weapons of mass destruction, spies and their masters have incurred suspicion about their motives and honesty. Cyprus fuels these anxieties by suggesting that the intelligence services' secret, unaccountable and duplicitous procedures may incite, not diminish, terrorism. The dramatic noose tightens thrillingly as the tables turn to devastating effect, and family ties are frailer than loyalty to the old ministerial firm."
- Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard (Critics Choice)

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

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

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