Theatre N O T S N H O J N H O J
PREVIEW CLASSIC ULYSSES Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Fri 12–Sat 27 Oct
When you think of the big ol’ modernist masterpieces, James Joyce’s 1922 novel Ulysses has probably inspired more hype, more academic criticism and more dispraise than any other, and yet it was inspired by a minor drunken tiff. One night in 1904 Dublin, the young Joyce tried to chat up a girl, unaware that she had a boyfriend. The boyfriend punched out the writer, but Joyce was picked up and looked after by a man he barely knew. Struck by the incident, he considered turning it into a short story. It ended up as the seed for the most controversial novel of the last 100 years.
There have been few adaptations of Joyce,
mainly due to his estate’s draconian interpretation of copyright law, but in 2012 the work entered public domain. One result is that you can now get Ulysses as a phone app, but another is that Irish writer Dermot Bolger’s 1994 stage adaptation can at last be given a full production by the Tron. Director Andy Arnold is excited at the prospect.
How did Bolger cope with the book’s notorious size? ‘Head on,’ Arnold affirms. ‘We have eight actors playing 80 characters. However, apart from the fact that it’s massively condensed, Dermot has selected all the best bits so that it’s hugely theatrical.’ Arnold is keen to emphasise how the basic story deals with things common to everyone: ‘our senses of humour and loss, our sexual obsessions and jealousies, our fantasies and dreams, our prejudices and our principles.’ It remains to be seen whether or not Bolger’s version conveys the reach and the grasp of the original; but after decades of legal blockages against the least attempt to rethink Joyce, it’s a triumph that it’s going on at all. (Alex Johnston)
PREVIEW NEW PLAY THE AUTHORISED KATE BANE Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Fri 12 Oct–Fri 26 Oct; Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Mon 30 Oct–Sat 3 Nov
PREVIEW NEW PLAY SEX & GOD Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Thu 11–Sat 13 Oct and touring Thu 27 Sep–Fri 26 Oct PREVIEW COMEDY THE INCREDIBLE ADVENTURES OF SEE THRU SAM Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Thu 20–Sat 29 Sep; Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Thu 18–Sat 20 Oct
Ella Hickson. If you don’t know her name already, you’re sure to soon. Author of the award- winning drama Eight – in which eight very distinct characters are explored in monologue – the young dramatist is currently under commission to the Royal Shakespeare Company and the acclaimed Headlong Theatre. All this in addition to writing her latest play, The Authorised Kate Bane, for leading Scottish theatre company Grid Iron.
A drama about memory and the construction of family ‘truths’, it is ‘a very brave piece’, says Grid Iron’s artistic director Ben Harrison. ‘She’s really mining her own biography, in terms
of trying to figure out what the effect of a divorce is on a child, and how it colours the rest of your life experience.’ Hickson is clearly a writer of considerable promise.
Harrison believes The Authorised Kate Bane might just be her breakthrough play. ‘Someone said recently that Ella is on the brink of greatness. This piece could be the big one.’ (Mark Brown)
104 THE LIST 20 Sep–18 Oct 2012
Religion and sex are the hot topics in Linda McLean’s latest theatrical offering, the focus of which revolves around four women, each living at different points in the 20th century. In a narrative that’s far from linear, the play begins in each era simultaneously and follows the lives and loves of the quartet, dipping in and out of their monologues to weave together their four stories.
‘Time and space are not real,’ says McLean by way of explanation. ‘In the play the women exist at the same time. They talk across time and are also conscious of each other.’
The production, while harbouring no explicitly political agenda, gives a voice to women of particular periods in Scottish history whose stories have not been widely told before.
‘Once you realise you’re writing about four
women, it’s hard not to make it about feminism,’ McLean continues. ‘Each woman is a different personality, partly because they are shaped by the period they live in. What emerges are issues that are the same throughout history, no matter what period you live in.’ (Kirstyn Smith)
A play about superheroes has been a long time coming from Johnny McKnight, writer and director of See Thru Sam, which heads to the Tron this month courtesy of Random Accomplice. It’s the story of an ordinary boy with the
extraordinary power of invisibility. But there’s a snag: his powers seem to be on the wane. ‘I’m a bit of a geek about superheroes,’ McKnight says, and so, inevitably, the play ‘is totally influenced by the mythology of that whole world.’ But rather than taking place in Gotham City, it’s mapped on to the familiar setting of your average secondary school. ‘I wanted to create this sense that if the school is the metropolis, who’s the villain? Who’s the love interest? It’s fitting these archetypes into the school scenario.’ But there’s a darker side, too, and a chance to explore the super fantasy in the light of grim real life. ‘Superheroes often have tragic back stories,’ McKnight continues, ‘so it’s looking at the reality of that, and how you might use the idea of being a superhero to deal with grief.’ (Charlotte Runcie)