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Sauchiehall Street.
- Tour & World Premiere.
Playwright - Iain Heggie.
Director - Matthew Lenton.
Set and Lighting Designer - Kai Fischer.
Company - Vanishing Point - Their Website.
Cast - here .
Opened at Venue - Traverse Theatre Edinburgh 0131 228 1404.
Dates - 11 (Preview), 12 & 13 at 7.30pm also 14 March at 5pm.
2003 Tour Dates and Times - here .
Seen to review at Traverse Theatre Edinburgh on 12 March 2004.
Run Time - 2 hours mins including 15 mins interval.
Reviewer - Thelma Good.
Some interesting shrapnel.
Suchiehall Street - Vanishing Point Production
© Tim Nunn 2004.
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Actors' agent Dorothy Darvel has been up a close in Sauchiehall Street
for thirty years. She's about to try out a new assistant Maureen, her
hubby Gerald hasn't tried out thespian activities for a while while youngsters
Candice and Barry are longing to get their first breaks.
Sauchiehall Street was once the shopping street of Glasgow, but it's drifted
downmarket to the tawdry end of commerce. Iain Heggie's fortunes to have
oscillated over the years but, from A Wholly Healthy Glasgow, through
Wiping My Mother's Arse (my favourite) and Love Freaks, he's taken scatter-gun
shots at Scotland's good view of itself and its failings.
A playwright sporting a large chip salted with vitriol, he can reduce
audiences to helpless laughter at themselves. This latest offering is
too long and has all the disjointed judders of a script short on tight
lines and comedy that builds. Some of the one liners are very funny, some
rely on intimate knowledge of the theatre business and its personalities.
But the laughter is separated by lines and lines of not witty or well
engineered enough exposition and marked down jokes. It's the theatrical
equivalent of a run down shopping centre, where a few good shops hang
grimly on.
Hanging on here are the cast, some manage to give performances worthy
of a better play. As the new assistant Dorothy is secretly grooming as
her successor, Maureen, Linda Duncan McLaughlin comes up trumps
as she grows and glamourises from stay at home mouse to sharpened agent,
all the while suffering from an extreme case of Malapropism. Peter
Kelly too as the elderly cynical actor Gerard ensures his lines hit
the targets Heggie intended. Though only seen in brief moments Clare
Yuille as the aspiring actress Candice, also gives us an enticing
glimpse of the heightened acting style Heggie says he's writing for. Newcomer
Fraser C. Sivewright has too little to work on as Barry, while
Jo Cameron Brown's Dorothy comes across too often as brash parody.
Sauchiehall Street leaves you feeling short changed, it's not only the
play. The set, which has to go into some very narrow theatres causes more
problems, with not enough space for physical moves and a rake which has
props falling repeatedly off surfaces on the first night. It also in wider
theatres restricts the view of some seats at the side and to the front,
rather spoiling the visual joke about the one subsided artistic outpost
holding on in Sauchiehall Street.
Vanishing Point's Matthew Lenton in commissioning Heggie has not managed
to bring to us a tight enough script or direction. But, and this is the
real shame, there's some interesting shrapnel about Scottish attitudes
in general and its theatre in particular thrown away in Heggie's random
pot-shot tirade.
© Thelma Good 12 March 2004. - Published on EdinburghGuide.com
The text is published by Methuen Books.
Reviews of other Iain Heggie Plays - Wiping
My Mother's Arse | Love
Freaks
EdinbuurghGuide reviews of other Vanishing Point Productions | Stars
Beneath the Sea | Brief
History of Time | Invisible
Man | Glimpse
Cast: Dorothy - Jo Cameron Brown, Gerard - Peter
Kelly, Maureen - Linda Duncan McLaughlin, Barry - Fraser C. Sivewright
and Candice - Clare Yuille.
2004 Tour Details of Vanishing Point's production
of Sauchiehall Street .
Tour begins
10 March (Preview) at 7.45pm Cumbernauld Theatre 01236 732 887.
11 (Preview), 12 & 13 at 7.30pm also 14 March at 5pm Edinburgh
Traverse Theatre 0131 228 1404.
17 March at 7.30pm Richmond (Yorks) Georgian Theatre Royal 01748
825 252.
18 March at 7:30pm Stirling Tolbooth 01786 27 4000.
19 March at 8pm Livingston Howden Park Centre 01506 433 634.
24 - 28 March at 7:30pm Glasgow Tron Theatre 0141 552 4267.
30 March at 7:30pm Aberdeen The Lemon Tree 01224 642 230.
3 April at 7:30pm Peebles Eastgate Theatre 01721 725 777.
Tour ends.
Theatre Editor, Thelma Good's e-mail is
thelma@edinburghguide.com
Although every effort has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the
information presented in these pages, no responsibility can be accepted
for any errors or omissions.
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