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The Mill Lavvies
Revival of 1998 production
Playwright - Chris Rattray
Director - Hamish Glen
Designer - Monica Nisbett
Lighting Designer - Richard Moffat
Music - Michael Marra
Company - Dundee Rep Resident
Company
Cast - here
Venue - Dundee Rep Theatre BO 01382 223 530
Dates - Previews
4 & 5 Nov at 7:45pm
6 - 23 Nov not Suns at 7:45pm
Mats 9 & 16 Nov at 2:30pm
Run Time 2 hrs 15 mins including 15 interval
Reviewer - Thelma Good
Flushed Back by popular demand
The Mill Lavvies - Dundee Rep Production
John Buick as Archie
© Douglas MacBride 2002
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The Mill Lavvies has been flushed back to the Rep stage by popular
demand. Having largely enjoyed its sequel, Changing
Kevin's Story, I found this musical play's brutishness, roughly smeared
on its surface lightheartedness, unsettling.
Set in the lavvies of a Dundee Jute Mill, a few months before the Beatles
came to the Caird Hall and few years before the mills started to go silent,
it takes place over a working day. The Lavvies are kept after a fashion
by Archie, John Buick, a man who never went to school much - he
didn't like it. He can't read but is happy in his simple world with his
friendly brush. Buick makes Archie a man your heart goes out to,
pulling the story away from its male air-headed romp. He's not treated
as a full human being by the men who work in the Mill and the rough, cruel
way men relate is an uneasy part of this musical play, frequently yanking
us back to a don't care, lowest common denominator, laughter.
There are no women in the play despite their being in the majority in
the mills' workforces, though Mrs Hackett and her loom are mentioned.
Geordie, Jim and Robert all served in the war. Geordie, Alexander West
captured in Singapore had the hardest time, Robert, Robert Paterson,
is a wee toadie, all bluster and nothing in his breeks while Jim, Michael
Marra has a habit of being near fires.
Andrew Clark convincingly gives us Kevin, the new boy still learning
about the mill and his workmates.
The most unstatisfactory character is teddy-boy Henny, Rodney Matthew.
Henny starts off angry and ends angry and we never find out
why. Despite the stour of the Jute Mill we have to believe that even on
his low wages and supporting his whole family he turns up for work every
day dressed in a leopard fur trimmed long jacket. The others all wear
scruffy clothes or overalls. It's par for a very variable play with an
inconclusive ending. Glen's direction does little to remedy its incoherent
approach. The sequel, where we only find out what happens to Kevin, is
more rounded, and it's a pity The Mill Lavvies wasn't revised before this
revival.
Archie's wholly believable story and Henny's lack of one give the production
troubling cracks, fortunately for Chris Rattray, his songs and music by
Michael Marra divert you into laughing along to If Dundee Was Africa,
Broom Crazy and Big Wide World Beyond The Seedlies. Nothing
much is fleshed out and if you're not a Dundonian or working class there's
not much to identify with in this play, even if you were just older than
Kevin when you heard the Mill going full tilt as you walked up the Hawkhill.
If you like the Steamie and most Scots who have working class roots do,
you'll probably love this play. I find it hard to understand why there
is so much nostagia for those times. Unless, and this I do find funny,
they can't bear the fact they're mostly middle class now.
It's the Dundee Rep audience's most requested, I'm told, and at times
it fairly maks them laugh but really it's a grim tale in a grimy toilet.
© Thelma Good 6 November 2002. - Published on EdinburghGuide.com
Cast
Henny - *Rodney Matthew
Archie - *John Buick
Thornton - *Peter Spence
Jim Burns - *Michael Marra
Kevin - Andrew Clark
Geordie - Alexander West
Robert - Robert Patterson
* this actors were in the original 1998 production.
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