NEW WORK
ICE CREAM DREAMS Citizen’s Theatre, Glasgow, Wed 28—Sat 31 Mar
When writer Martin McCardie. currently best—known for his work on Channel 4's Shameless. was approached to write a play set during the Glasgow Ice Cream Wars of 1983. he resisted the ready-made plot of drug-dealing and unsolved murder. 'I made a definite decision not to engage directly With the history — someone should tell that story. but you'd need a different kind of play to do it. However. that image of people selling heroin from the ice cream vans has always stuck with me. because. when l was a child. it was such an innocent. exciting thing to do. Christ. get them while they're young. eh?‘
McCardie has created a lyrical piece that uses the real life events as background to a meditation on the cyclical nature of heroin addiction. 'There's a lot of repetition in the language. circularity in the words — things keep happening the same way. I concentrated on the words. and on ghosts and echoes of the past that will mean something to everyone.‘
The family at the heart of /ce Cream Dreams is flanked by an ever-pmsent Glasgow chorus who involve themselves in everything that happens. stepping in and out of roles and forming a fragmented sense of community onstage. Many of these parts are played by first—time actors working alongside the txofessionals - people whose lives have been affected in some way by heroin addiction. The cycle of addiction — that doesn't change] says lvlcCardie. ‘Things just keep happening the same way.‘ (Kirstin Innesi
NEW WORK MONKS
Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, Fri 16 Mar—Sat 7 Apr
I expect at times we all wonder what life is all about. Beyond all the ceaseless trudging on and on. the struggle with mortgages. the hassles at work. the stress of supermarket queues and so on. there's surely some greater purpose. Whether there is or not. the writing of Des Dillon seems to characterise our struggle to find something above pure quotidian existence. In Six 8/ack Cand/es. we saw a group of women pract'sing ‘v'JliCl‘itll'éift to instill some jtlSilCO into the world. This year. the quest for the metaphysical finds a more orthodox outlet.
In this new comedy. we meet a group of Glasgow men who've come to the mountaintop retreat of a renowned Italian monk with healing powers. in order that their mate can be cured of his catatonia. Here they meet a woman obsessed with her ex—husband. also intent upon a way out.
The farcical possibilities are obvious. but director Ivlark Thomson says there's a depth beyond the humour. ‘There's an earthy foul mouthed poetry to it. but there's something else under it that's above the everyday world. Monks has a philosophical resonance to it. It requires a kind of quixotic alacrity of mind and Spirit from the actors." he says. 'We're a culture in search of a spiritual truth and that gap. that sense of a black hole. we've no idea how to fill it. whether it's some new form of spirituality or another kind of quest.’ Promising a night of twisting plots and exotic locations. if this piece doesn't instil you with a renewed faith. it should at least fill an evening with laughter. (Steve Craiiieri
PreVIews NEW WORK
BAD JAZZ Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Wed 21 —Sat 24 Mar
It’s hard not to feel a certain resistance to the term ‘play within a play’ these days. After over 20 years of those pieces which hide behind the terms ‘postmodern’ and ‘meta-narrative’ in order for members of the profession to talk about themselves and very little else, there’s bound to be a certain sense of alarm in any regular theatregoer. But be reassured, although these terms might apply to this new piece, the company behind it, ATC, speaks resolutely of a quality above the average. Last year, A Brief History of Helen of Troy and the Fringe’s Gizmo Love were among the most distinctive, intelligent and entertaining pieces you could’ve hoped to see.
So, in taking on this Robert Farquhar piece, director Gordon Anderson is aware of the pitfalls. In it, a group of actors are brought together to mount a play which intends to break artistic boundaries. Chief among these is the idea of having an actress perform fellatio live on stage. The guru-like director sees this as an important
Theatre
act of iconoclasm, not a point of view shared by the actress in question, much less her boyfriend. Yet this is not the only problem among a cast of me-generation wannabes.
‘It’s a play about a group of people in pursuit of the wrong things in a culture where there isn’t much guidance. It has a dark content, but it expresses itself in a very comic way,’ explains Anderson, who’ll be directing his last show as artistic director for the company. Unlike many of the plays that preceded it, this piece has a definite satirical focus, lampooning the ‘because I’m worth it’ mentality. ‘No one in the play has any ideology other than making the next moment work for them. It’s closest ancestor is Joe Orton,’ Anderson adds. ‘lt’s a satire of that way of making art that is apparently about the underclass, but is really a piece of exploitative voyeurism. It turns into one of those plays that’s a bit pseudo, masquerading as meaningful. A play within a play, though, is a risky endeavour, it has to be more than a spoof — it has to hit real targets in the industry, like ego, power and lust, it has to be true about the bad things.’ So it’s postmodernism, Jim, but not as we know it.
(Steve Cramer)
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