Tron Theatre, Glasgow 4 stars The technical hitches that opened the 2012 version of the National Theatre of Scotland’s compendium of bite-size performances beamed live across the internet may have resembled the early days of Channel Four, but the creative anarchy that followed was worth the wait. Run over six hours, and with seventy-two plays on offer , this year’s protest-based theme concentrated things even further, even if the sole screen in the Tron’s noisy restaurant was less than ideal for anyone wanting to witness the event beyond the works performed live in the venue’s Victorian Bar. For those with laptops, the first hour alone included Craigowl Primary School’s study of Grandpa Broon, Amy Conway’s meditation on fallen war reporter Marie Colvin and the CurvebALL Collective’s physical theatre flash-mob in George Square. It was here Tam Dean Burn’s punk Robert Burns outfit The Bumclocks performed an anti-war mash-up of Burns, Pinter and Gunter Grass. Under the Scottish Governments increasingly silly-looking Public Entertainment License laws, the last two events are potentially illegal, as Alexandra Patience made clear in DIY, a story-telling piece performed outdoors in Portskerra. Edinburgh University’s proposed closure of the Bongo Club was highlighted by the venue’s staff, Theatre Create presented a pertinent satire of radical chic, while Howie Reeve’s Grub’s Up served up a simple but effective mouthful. But it was Emma Callendar’s dramatic intervention for one person, Kettle, which captured the evening’s spirit. A recording of one man’s experience of being kettled by police is heard as the camera opens out on the city, where a group of masked interlopers slowly surround the play’s sole audience member. In its simplicity, it sums up how protest can lead to real creative action. The Herald, May 2nd 2012 ends
When Ron Butlin saw a man who’d just asked him the time throw himself under a train on the Paris Metro, it was a turning point in how his 1987 novel, The Sound Of My Voice, would turn out. Twenty years on, Butlin’s tale of suburban family man Morris Magellan’s existential crisis and his subsequent slide into alcoholism is regarded as a lost classic. Prime material, then, for the very intimate stage adaptation which opens in the Citizens Theatre’s tiny Stalls Studio tonight. “I had this friend in London who was an alcoholic,” Butlin recalls. “He would go off to work in the civil service in the morning looking absolutely immaculate. Then at night we’d meet, and he’s get mega-blootered, then go home and continue drinking and end up in a really bad state. I remember staying over one night, and he’d emerge from his room looking immaculate again. There was this huge contrast between what was going on outside and what was going on inside.” We’re sitting in a café on Edinburgh’s south sid
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