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Whisky Galore
- Tour.
This play was first performed at Perth Theatre Scotland in the bar in
mid-1980s.
Script - Created by a team of actors and Director/Writer Paul Godfrey
in mid-1980s from the Compton Mackenzie novel of same name.
Director - Alasdair McCrone.
Company - Mull Theatre - Company Website.
EdinburghGuide page
about company with reviews.
Cast - here .
2004 Dates and Times on Mull - here .
Seen to review at Byre Theatre St Andrews on 20 June 2004.
Run Time - 2 hours including an interval.
Reviewer - Thelma Good.
Fun to delight in.
Whisky Galore - Mull Theatre Production.
Kevin Lennon as Ivor Ash.
© photographer 2004.
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This is the British Broadcasting Corporations Home Service live again,
at least that's what it feels like in this much requested revival of Whisky
Galore. It's not a straight dramatisation of Compton Mackenzie's novel,
it's set, in an inspired stroke, in the BBC recording studios by the kind
of actors who we heard in the 1940s and 50s in front of a live audience
- us.
Not only a play within a play it has all the added excitement of seeing
the sound effects created - the fog horn will mean you never look at a
tin tea pot in the same way again. Alan Steele, Steven Clyde and
Beth Marshall are the multi-voiced radio actors resplendent in evening
dress. Nor are they merely vocal characters the tensions and idiosyncrasies
of Steele's maybe caddish, unctuous Hubert Clachlan-Bell, Clyde's
light on his feet and audience pleasing Nathan Dane and Marshall's
elegantly cocktail fuelled Iona Carr add to the delight of the added layer.
It really does capture those Scottish radio plays and provides lots of
laughter - warm recognition from the older members of the audience and
delighted guffaws from first time arounders. The "technicians"
Kevin Lennon's early geek Ivor Ash and Kay McIntyre's possible
future female producer Mae Duguid ensure the backroom boy and girl are
frontliners too. The sound effects mainly provided by them are created
live and the audience are called upon to provide crowd effects and you'll
learn a wee bit of the Gaelic too. Director Alasdair McCrone fills the
production with lots of visual as well as aural business within Alicia
Hendrick's set notably redolent of the period's love of brown.
Nostalgia and humour galore in this production where the actors give us
fun to delight in. It's worth the revival and an interesting coupling
with the other shows in Mull Theatre's Summer season, the Scottish premiere
of Martin MacDonagh's Lonesome West, (Mull Scottish premiered his A
Skull in Connemara in 2002) and a dramatisation of Robert Louis Stevenson's
Kidnapped,
all in different ways looking at how communities and people cope with
visitors and outsiders.
Scottish Theatres in the main cities have no own productions for the summer.
Fortunately Mull, Pitlochry and the Byre Theatre all have companies based
in smaller holiday places who try to refresh theatre going locals and
visitors alike in the summer time. Mull unlike its other summer colleagues
needs a new theatre space for the future. This year they are largely using
spaces in Tobermory rather than their original wee theatre in Dervaig.
Hopefully soon this company's ability to draw audiences for serious and
fun plays alike will be rewarded with a larger, permanent space in one
of Scotland's most beautiful and creative islands - Mull.
© Thelma Good 19 June 2004. - Published on EdinburghGuide.com
Cast: Hubert Clachlan-Bell - Alan Steele, Ivor
Ash - Kevin Lennon, Nathan Dane - Steven Clyde, Iona Carr - Beth Marshall
and Mae Duguid - Kay McIntyre.
2004 Dates in Mull
22 - 25 June at AnTobar Tobermory Mull 01688 302828.
5 & 6 July, 9 - 11, 19 - 20, 23 - 25 Aug and 2 - 8Sep
(ex Sun) at Screen Machine Tobermory Mull 01688 302828.
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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