LISTING the top 20 theatre events ever to take place in Scotland is an almost impossible task, but we have tried to come up with a selection that is rich, interesting and shaped by our own passion for theatre as part of the nation's life.
Our rules were as follows: we would try to capture a sense of theatre history, while not apologising for showing a bias towards the past half-century, a time that saw a true renaissance in theatre-making in this country. Also, this would not be a lis
t of Scottish-made productions, but of great theatre events in Scotland, which had impact, significance and some kind of transforming power.
Many thanks to our judging panel - arts journalists Jackie McGlone, Mark Fisher and Andrew Burnet, along with Catherine Lockerbie, director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Brian McMaster, recently retired director of the Edinburgh International Festival, and Christopher Richardson, founder of that great Fringe venue, the Pleasance.
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HAMLET, CITIZENS' THEATRE, GLASGOW, 4 SEPTEMBER 1970
A landmark butchering of the Dane
"HAMLET depicted as a gibbering oaf" ran the headline in The Scotsman, when for the first and last time in its history this paper printed a front-page review. Giles Havergal's "crude" production was "a hideous spectacle", fumed arts editor Allen Wright.
The cast was young, beautiful, all-male - and unidentified. Glaswegian David Hayman was the prince. Everyone was in black, the gravediggers wore only loincloths, and the text was butchered. It was thrilling stuff, playing to full houses booing, hissing and cheering.
It marked the forging of the Citizens' trademark unbridled individuality, as Havergal and Philip Prowse were joined by dramatist Robert David MacDonald, exploring the European repertoire with provocative productions in high-camp style by gorgeously costumed actors.
In 1977, Prowse's production of Chinchilla, McDonald's play about the impresario Diaghilev and the dancer Nijinsky, opened. It was revived at the 1979 Edinburgh International Festival, before touring Europe and the Caracas V International Theatre Festival, establishing the theatre's international reputation.
A Waste of Time (1981), MacDonald's "reduced Proust extravaganza", ran for a week and was later revived after touring Holland. The cast included Gary Oldman and Rupert Everett. It won no awards, but was a landmark theatrical event, a seductive staging of great literature.
JACKIE McGLONE
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THE SLAB BOYS, TRAVERSE, EDINBURGH, 6 APRIL 1978
Bursting with poetic life rather than the usual despair
OF ALL the Scottish playwrights of the past half-century, John Byrne is the most restlessly, relentlessly original. Born in Paisley in 1940 - and brought up in what was then a deprived council estate, though Byrne says he loved it - he emerged first as a visual artist rather than a writer. At the age of 19, he swapped Stoddart's Carpet Factory for Glasgow School of Art, and never looked back. He designed the legendary pop-up-book set for 7:84 Scotland's 1973 debut, and Billy Connolly's fantastic Big Banana Feet boots for The Great Northern Welly Boot Show of 1972.
His first play, Writer's Cramp, appeared in 1977. But it was with The Slab Boys, premiered at the Traverse in 1978 in a glittering production by David Hayman, that Byrne propelled himself to fame as a key figure in Scotland's theatre renaissance. A cheeky and inventive variation on the traditional workplace play - set in a Paisley carpet factory in 1957 - The Slab Boys was the first-ever drama about Scottish working-class life that was neither militantly political, nor fiercely gloomy, nor self-pityingly elegiac. Instead, it was bursting with life, brimming with poetic rococo variations on real west-of-Scotland street language, and brilliant in its recognition of that key postwar moment when growing affluence, and exposure to American popular culture, began to open new creative possibilities for working-class boys.
The original cast included Robbie Coltrane as a middle-class slab boy with upwardly mobile aspirations, and Byrne went on to create the cult TV hit Tutti Frutti, now revived by the National Theatre of Scotland. But it was that cry from the 1950s, filtered through the lens of the late 1970s, which first signalled his vital postmodern vision of working-class Scotland as a place full of energy, colour and exotic possibility.
JOYCE McMILLAN
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HUIS CLOS, TRAVERSE, EDINBURGH, 2 JANUARY 1963
Stabbing throws open closed doors
THE Traverse first opened its doors on 2 January 1963, in weather conditions described as "arctic". The place was a former brothel on two floors of a tenement in James Court; the organisation was a shoestring private theatre club, co-founded by American serviceman Jim Haynes, art teacher Richard Demarco, and a group of their friends; and the programme was a double-bill, of Fernando Arrabal's Orison and Jean-Paul Sartre's Huis Clos, typical of the ground-breaking European drama - often not yet seen in Britain - the Traverse had partly been founded to promote.
During the second performance of Huis Clos, actress Colette O'Neill was accidentally stabbed, and almost bled to death. Suddenly, the Traverse's fame and notoriety were guaranteed and, in the words of its first director, Terry Lane, "never looked back". Even Lane, though, could hardly have predicted the theatre's evolution into the powerhouse of new writing it has become. Today, the Traverse is world famous as an exponent of the role of new drama in the life of nations and, without it, many of the playwrights whose work is celebrated in our Top 20 might never have emerged on to the public stage.
JOYCE McMILLAN
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THE DOUGLAS, CANONGATE THEATRE, EDINBURGH, 14 DECEMBER 1756
"Whaur's yer Wullie Shakespear noo?" - does praise come higher?
THE most famous piece of Scottish theatre criticism, immediate and succinct, came from a member of the audience swept away with enthusiasm for John Home's The Douglas. "Whaur's yer Wullie Shakespeare noo?" yelled the eager theatregoer.
Shakespeare's plays have stood the test of time better than Home's verse tragedy, but in 18th-century Scotland the jury was still out. In keeping with the patriotic mood of the day, The Douglas told the story of Young Norval, a soldier in the Scottish army. When the secret nobility of his birth is revealed, he dies protecting the honour of his long-lost mother, who herself dies jumping off a castle tower.
The audience loved its nationalist tone and many were moved to tears. There were those who disapproved of Home, a Church of Scotland minister, writing a play at all, but the public was in favour and it was the first sign that the religious censors were losing their grip. The critic of the Caledonian Mercury called it "one of the most perfect works of genius that any age has produced".
MARK FISHER
THE TOP 20 SO FAR
9 The Mahabharata, Old Transport Museum, Glasgow, 13 April 1988
10 Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off, Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, 10 August 1987
11 Trainspotting, Citizens' Theatre, Glasgow, 5 May 1994
12 The Guid Sisters, Tron, Glasgow, 2 May 1989
13 The Ship, Harland & Wolff, Glasgow, 15 September 1990
14 Dead Class, Richard Demarco Gallery/Edinburgh College of Art, August 1976
15 The Bloody Chamber The Haunted Vaults, Edinburgh, 11 August 1997
16 Europe, Traverse, Edinburgh, 21 October 1994
17 Tectonic Plates, Tramway, Glasgow, 23 November 1990
18 The Path, Glen Lyon, Perthshire, 19 May 2000
19 Blackbird, King's Theatre, Edinburgh, 15 August 2005
20 Medea, Old Quadrangle, The University of Edinburgh, 23 August 1986
DO YOU AGREE?
Whatever you think of our choices, we'd love to hear your views, either by post or at www.scotsman.com/top20 where, from tomorrow, the whole list will be available to view at your leisure.
