THEATRE new shows

A NEW LOOK -— A NEW SEASON! AS YOU’VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE!

Sept & Oct Programme

DRAMA 5 - 20 Sept

Brunton Theatre Company Bram Stoker’s Dracula

23 ~ 24 Sept Borderline Theatre Company The Misanthrope

26 Sept

Benchtours The Corridor

30 Sept - 4 Oct

Communicado Theatre Company The Suicide

l0 -- 25 Oct

Brunton Theatre Company When I was a Girl I Used to Scream and Shout

27-29 Oct

Red Shift Theatre Company Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables

COMEDY

8 Sept Only An Excuse? '97 -The Solo Run with jonathan Watson 3 Oct

Rhona Cameron

24 Oct Sean Hughes in Alibi's For Life

CHILDREN

is Sept Visible Fictions Theatre Company The Red Balloon

22 Oct The Happy Gang in Hyperspace

MUSIC 6 Oct

Elaine Delmar Songs of Love

20 Oct Boys of the Lough In Concert

CHRlSTMAS 2 Dec - 31cm l998

The Brunton Theatre Company Mother Goose

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new shows

EUROPEAN CLASSIC The House Of Bernarda

Alba

Glasgow: Tramway, Tue 9—Sat 20 Sep (not Sun 14, Mon 15).

’Theatre’s for everybody, not just the middle classes.’ So says Stuart Davids, director of Raindog's new co- production with Tramway, a reworking of Lorca's classic tale of repression and cruelty in a house full of women.

His sentiment is very much in keeping with Raindog's philosophy, which successfully attracted a younger and less posh audience with Wasted, a piece on homelessness, poverty and drugs. An actor-friendly company, which Davids co-founded with Robert Carlyle and Caroline Paterson, Raindog has assembled a strong cast, led by Barbara Rafferty, whose endless film and television credits have most recently included The Granton Star Cause and The Slab Boys.

The cast contains over 40 women. ’Lorca himself wanted over 200 for this play,’ explains DaVids. ’In a space like Tramway, you need something big and intimidating. If theatre is going to compete with TV and film, we need to explore the full depth of spaces.’

Davids has rewritten some of Lorca’s text. 'The Lorca purist may not like the things I’ve added,’ he admits, ’but it suits our ensemble style.’ From this there emerges a different Bernarda

Women on the verge: The House Of Bernarda Alba

Alba. The story of a widowed woman, who oppresses her five daughters and mother with a regime of strict moral probity, normally creates a picture of an extremely austere, even cruel central character. Davids considers other possibilities. 'Bernarda is sometimes seen as a dark gaoler, a very hard woman, but we're trying to bring out the humanity of the characters,’ he explains. ’Bernarda acts in the best interests of the women around her.’

The play was Lorca's last before his murder. 'He never lived to see it performed,’ says Davids. 'But he produced something which is still relevant to the plight of women today.’ (Steve Cramer)

NEW ADAPTATION Dracula

Edinburgh: Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh Fri S—Sat 20 Sep.

Still scary after all these years: Dracula

Cheap thrills and sheer pant-wetting terror That's the normal association for those of us weaned on Hammer House versions of Bram Stoker's cult classic Dracula

A century on from its spine-tingling publication, the leftfield yarn is still resurrected With the same regularity as

its anti-hero. Now it’s the turn of DaVid lvlark Thomson, new artistic director at Musselburgh's swankin refurbished Brunton Theatre. Thomson is making his debut With a brand new adaptation by Scots writer Patrick Prior.

Eager to sink his teeth into the JOb, Thomson is also sussed enough not to scare off the Brunton’s traditional audience by indulging in reckless programming. ’l’m not interested at all in any piece of programming that’s purely populist,’ he asserts. ’YeS, it’s a popular story; but it's underlined by this intelligent debate about good and ml, which Patrick really brings out.’

No one is unfamiliar With the story of the TranSylvanian hickey-king and his quest for nubile y0ung Virgins - though on initial, immature consumption, we probably didn't notice that it does have some serious points to make. ’Absolutely everyone has a cultural access to it from Bela Lugosi to Hammer House to the Coppola versmn,’ Thomson points out The inewtable result is an insatiable thirst for the combined thrill and fear factor elicited on sneaked childhood VieWings, The difficulty is bringing out the parallels With contemporary SOCIGIy. 'Represmon is umversal,’ argues Thomson. 'Anyone who's been repressed, be it psychological, sexual, political or social, can relate to this'

But Thomson is under no i||us|ons about the task in hand. 'lt's giiite intense, but we also want to make it genumely sexy and scary, which are two of the hardest things to achieve on stage,’ he confesses. On the other hand, it's a damn fine yarn, which helps a lot. (Claire Prentice)