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Theatre listings >
The Queen Of Spades
Playwright - John Clifford
Director - Patrick Sandford
Set Designer - Adrian Rees
Costume Designer - Monika Nisbet
Lighting Designer - Mark Pritchard
Company - Pitlochry Festival Theatre Company 2002
Venue - Pitlochry Festival Theatre www.pitlochry.org.uk
01796 484626
By the banks of the River Tummel, their theatre has most beautiful setting.
Pitlochry is about 2hrs easy drive from Edinburgh + has lots of hotels
and B+Bs. When theatre is open Restaurant booking advised 01796 484626
for dinner also Bar and Coffee Bar.
EdinburghGuide Pitlochry
Festival Theatre Page with last season's reviews and info
Dates - see end of review
Run Time 2 hrs including a 20 minute interval
Reviewer - Thelma Good
Clifford's witty, intelligent and moving script
The Queen of Spades - Pitlochry Festival Theatre Production
Kitty Lucas as Liza looking through the periaktoi.
©Keith Brame 2002
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Encompassing love, betrayal, wealth and passion Pushkin's story inspired
Modest and Peter Tchaikovsky's opera. Now John Clifford has created a
new version where Peter Tchaikovsky's real life patron Nadezhda von Meck
becomes the Countess and the composer, who never met her in life, finds
himself looking on in her opulent rooms able only to talk to us.
It's set in 1917 in St Petersburg and Adrian Rees has used in his lustrous
set two pairs of periaktoi* which enable scenes to transform while the
spaces between them act as doors to other rooms or places. Topped with
golden onion domes and beeswax candles with the flats painted in Russian
style we are definitely in that extraordinary country which fuses Europe
and the beyond into a rich exoticism. Designer Monika Nisbet clothes the
cast to reflect the old order in the footman's 18th century costume, the
rich glamour of the wealthy and the officers and the influence of pre
WW1 Paris fashion.
Clifford has used the backdrop of the increasingly fragile Russia to create
a play full of memorable roles which Pitlochry's 2002 company almost without
exception make their own. Particularly Edith MacArthur is resplendent
as the Countess still beautiful though old and hardened. While Kitty
Lucas is luminous as her niece Liza who's engaged to the high-ranking
Yeletsky, Gavin Kean who makes him excellently superior. His friend
Hermann, Guy Fearon, returns from the disintegrating Western Front,
with the look of death in his eyes and his rather dulled nature. In various
ways he troubles all of them, a difficult role which Fearon could
only, due to to some extent to the stilted words he was given, get the
measure of in the second half.
As Tchaikovsky's ghost, Michael Mackenzie gives us the man confused
and surprised by his death, eager to share his past life and the loves
and longings it contained. Throughout the play Clifford raises again and
again what is it to love, to be a man, who should you love, how can you
love and is love so important and does who you are matter? All fascinating
questions and Clifford introduces them using all the characters. John
Buick, for instance is the Countess's footman the faithful servant
who was close to her when they were both young. Anton, lively, endearingly
performed by Matt Blair, is a boy in man's clothing who starts
as an umbrella soldier but later acquires a fearsome weapon, wielding
it with terrifying childish abandon. Cleaning throughout, always at the
bottom of the heap is Anna, Lucy Patterson, despite her spirit
you know she will be mop in hand always to echo the song she enters with
a maid for all that.
Patrick Sandford's direction gives Clifford's witty, intelligent and moving
script a generally buoyant production which sheds light into the fragile
states of human love and longing, even though the central character of
Hermann really doesn't work at the beginning. Seeing a new Clifford play
is a delight I dearly hope I will experience again soon. This playwright
should be more produced in this country where he has lived longer in than
any other - his voice is unique and well worth listening to.
© Thelma Good 11 July 2002
*Periaktoi - Three flats set in the form of a prism on a revolving
base, thought to originate in classical Greek theatre, it enables very
fast scene changes.
Dates of perfomances of The Queen Of Spades in Pitlochry Festival Theatre's
2002 Season
preview 11th July (2pm),
First night 11th July (8pm), 15th July (8pm), 23rd July (8pm),
1st August (8pm), 9th August (8pm), 17th August (8pm), 21st August
(8pm), 28th August (8pm), 31st August (2pm),
6th September (8pm), 11th September (8pm), 19th September (8pm),
23rd September (8pm), 28th September (8pm),
3rd October (8pm), 11th October (8pm), 15th October (8pm), 16th
October (2pm).
End of The Queen of Spades performances
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