Theatre
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‘IT’S NOT JUST A QUESTION OF CHANGING LOCAL REFERENCES AND PLACE NAMES’ Hitlist THE BEST THEATRE & DANCE*
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✽✽ Peter Pan The Lyceum chalks up another magical Christmas show with Jemima Levick’s adaptation of the JM Barrie classic. See review, page 86. Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, until Sun 3 Jan. ✽✽ We Will Rock You Leave your cynicism at the door and shout along to all the hits at this Ben Elton-scripted musical based on the mighty Queen’s back catalogue. Edinburgh Playhouse, until Sat 9 Jan. ✽✽ Robinson Crusoe and the Caribbean Pirates Grant Stott and Allan Stewart reprise their familiar panto roles as villain and dame respectively in this swashbuckling new show. See review, page 86. King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, until Sun 17 Jan. ✽✽ Cinderella A magical new version of the Grimm brothers’ much-loved fairy tale, written specially for the Citz. Reviewed next issue. Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, until Sat 2 Jan. ✽✽ The Corstorphine Road Nativity Tim Firth adapts his own telly drama for Scottish audiences. See preview, left. Edinburgh Festival Theatre, Thu 3–Sat 19 Dec. ✽✽ Aladdin The great panto pairing of Gerard Kelly and Karen Dunbar star alongside Any Dream Will Do runner up Keith Jack in the King’s legendary trad panto. Reviewed next issue. King’s Theatre, Glasgow, Fri 4 Dec–Sun 17 Jan. ✽✽ Zorro Davey Anderson teams up with Visible Fictions to bring forth some action-packed festive fun. Reviewed next issue. Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Fri 4–Thu 24 Dec. ✽✽ Scottish Ballet: The Nutcracker A return to Scottish stages of the Ashley Page-choreographed production of the Tchaikovsky favourite. See picture caption, page 88. Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Sat 12–Thu 31 Dec, then touring.
3–17 Dec 2009 THE LIST 85
Infants holy
Playwright Tim Firth has scored huge hits with Calendar Girls and Kinky Boots. Now he’s bringing his comic talents to Corstorphine Road. Kirstin Innes meets him
T he Angel Gabriel wants to be Mary. Herod wants to be David Beckham. Baby Jesus’ head just fell off, and the innkeeper’s a budding psychopath. Ten years ago, Tim Firth’s Flint Street Nativity, a look at the chaos backstage at a primary school nativity play, was conceived as a one-off, 70- minute television play, a vehicle for the talents of Frank Skinner, Neil Morrissey and Dervla Kirwan, doubling up roles as the warring six-year-olds and their parents. Those stars have all moved on over the last decade, as has Firth himself, who has been busily occupied writing the screenplays for films like Calendar Girls, Confessions of a Shopaholic and Kinky Boots.
However, due in part to festive re-runs, the kids of Flint Street stuck in people’s minds. They got a second lease of life when Firth was asked to adapt the production for the Liverpool Playhouse in 2007, and this year they’re developing Edinburgh accents and moaning about the tramworks, as Firth has recruited the likes of Colin McCredie (Taggart) and Julie Wilson Nimmo (Balamory) and relocated the play to the (fictional) Corstorphine Road Primary School. ‘I wanted Edinburgh to feel as great a sense of ownership over the play as Liverpool did with the original stage version,’ says Firth, explaining why he felt the need to be personally involved in the transfer. ‘The references were all very Liverpudlian, and it was important for me that that people in any town, any time would be able to relate. It’s not just a question of changing local references and place names: so much of the comedy is to do with the music of the way people speak and the peccadilloes of language that we use in
everyday life. I’m from England – I can’t write that. I needed to be in the rehearsal room with actors who are Scottish, listening to the cadences and asking them: how would you say this if you were six years old and living just off the Corstorphine Road?’ Audiences familiar with the television version will also remember how compactly it packed ten very familiar characters – from the power-mad school bully in the angel wings to the lisping Wise Man with stage fright – as well as hints of their affecting home lives into just over an hour. In order to draw things out for the stage, Firth has turned the nativity into a musical.
‘We never really got to use the carols in the original, and I think that’s a shame. If you’ve got a load of kids singing words they don’t understand like “lo he abhors not the virgin’s womb”, then their minds are going to wander. I realised I could essentially make the carols into soliloquies, where you can unlock what’s going on in their home lives, so you get to spend time with the children. And once they’ve told us all the truth about what’s going on in their lives, the parents come on and put that marvellous social sheen on everything, that usual load of adult flannel.’
If the production has endured, is it perhaps because
the characters, adult and child, are instantly relatable? ‘That membrane between the childhood and adult life is so flimsy anyway,’ he agrees. ‘There’s very little that goes on in the classroom that won’t happen 30 years later in the boardroom.’
Corstorphine Road Nativity, Edinburgh Festival Theatre, Thu 3–Sat 19 Dec.