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A Plea: Bring Scotland to England!Dateline: 13th May, 2004Uncle Varick, currently filling the Royal Lyceum, is a new version of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya by the multi-talented John Byrne. He is perhaps most famous as writer of the TV series Tutti Frutti which starred Robbie Coltrane, but he is also an artist good enough to occupy a whole wall in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. As well as writing the bitingly funny and occasionally poignant Uncle Varick, Byrne has also come up with an excellent design for the play featuring a mobile forest. Why is it so unlikely that plays like this will make it even to the London fringe, let alone the West End? The star, Brian Cox is well-known and respected on both sides of the Atlantic and gives a really excellent performance. The language of everyone except that of Kirsty Morag, an old retainer, is perfectly intelligible even to coddled English ears, so that cannot be the reason. The London stage loves the Irish. Many playwrights from the Emerald Isle are as familiar as natives. Think of Conor McPherson, Marie Jones and Brian Friel and you have still only scratched the surface. This popularity may be in part because there is a large Irish community in London but then that would not explain why the real favourites down south are the Americans who sometimes seem more prevalent on Shaftesbury Avenue than the locals. That anomaly, in fact, is easily explained. It is the result of an American cultural imperialism that means that their television programmes and movies are often more familiar to the British than their own. Therefore, when Matthew Perry from Friends or Alyson Hannigan from Buffy appear on a London stage, tickets sell like hot cakes (or cookies). The English and the Scots share a common language and for the last couple of hundred years at least have been friendly, if fiercely independent, nations. Edinburgh also has a massive advantage in that the whole of the London theatre world grinds to a standstill in August and decamps there for a month. The usual result is that the Royal Court or the Bush might unearth a gem but West End producers keep their heads down. It is baffling why, in relative terms, so few Scottish plays travel when they have such a fantastic showcase and are so often very good. Last year, every British play at the Traverse during the Festival made it to a fairly major London stage within months, and in some cases weeks. There were two exceptions, guess where from? Henry Adam's pithy, street wise comedy, The People Next Door made it to the very worthy Theatre Royal Stratford East, while even more surprisingly, the relatively well-recognised David Harrower's admittedly more determinedly Scottish play, Dark Earth, stayed put. Harrower, like another David - Greig - whose San Diego from the International Festival also failed to obtain a Southern transfer, has been more successful using other voices. Each has made it to the West End with adaptations of classic plays. Indeed both Greig's wonderful Caligula (Camus) and Harrower's Tales from the Vienna Woods (von Horwath) were successful translations, but in neither case was there a Scottish accent to be heard. This article is really a plea for the opportunity to see more Scottish theatrical work in London. Between The Citizen's in Glasgow and the Traverse and Lyceum in Edinburgh, there is plenty of high quality work to choose from. It is quite possible that the good burghers of Dundee, Musselburgh and Aberdeen might also be able to make the case for works developed in their locale.
Like most theses, this one is capable of challenge. A quick think brings to mind some real recent successes such as Rona Munro's Iron which did well in both London and New York, Further that the Furthest Thing by Zinnie Harris which was a co-production with the National Theatre, and a couple of Bryony Lavery's. David Greig has had a fair amount of his prolific canon produced in London, managing about a 50% success rate with transfers including most recently, Outlying Islands. Add in Gregory Burke's First of the Firsts Gagarin Way and Anthony Neilson's Stitching though and you get close to the lot. There is so much good Scottish writing that often has a different take from anything currently to be seen in London and a special poetic language. It would be really good for the English to have the chance to see work by Iain Heggie, John Clifford, almost unknown outside his native country, Liz Lochhead and Douglas Maxwell (who respectively had brief tenancies at Hampstead and Soho a couple of years ago) not to mention far more from those mentioned already. It shouldn't be difficult to set the ball rolling and find a stage for Uncle Varick. Sadly, the Duke of York's has had two very short runs with ill-judged selections. Here is a plea to English producers to travel North of the Border to search out some fresh new writing that is far better than so much that is keeping it out at the moment. These days, the journey takes an hour and can cost less that £40 return. With well-known Scottish actors like Mr Coltrane, Ewan McGregor, Emma Thompson, Kelly Macdonald and John Gordon Sinclair - or even Sean Connery! - as alternatives to the Hollywood superstars, such a project might even make some adventurous producer or angel very rich. Philip Fisher Articles Indices:
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