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.
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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MEN SHOULD WEEP, ATHENAEUM THEATRE, GLASGOW, 30 JANUARY 1947
AS SOON as it opened in 1947, Ena Lamont Stewart's Men Should Weep was recognised as a major Scottish drama, a true tenement tragedy about an unsung working-class heroine trying to hold her family together in the impossible conditions of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Presented by the great Glasgow Unity company of the 1940s, the play represented the strongest female - and proto-feminist - voice in the wave of powerful working-class drama that emerged during those years; and like most of Glasgow Unity's work, it was largely forgotten after the company disbanded. But Lamont Stewart's play experienced an astonishing rebirth in 1982, when - along with other working-class plays of its time - it was rediscovered by John McGrath of the 7:84 Theatre Company, and presented as part of his ground-breaking Clydebuilt Season at that year's Glasgow Mayfest. Given an astonishingly radical Expressionist production by Giles Havergal of the Citizens' Theatre, the show blew traditional expectations about naturalistic slum drama clean out of the water; and made a whole new generation thrillingly aware of the sheer tragic weight, and powerful global resonances, of what had long been dismissed as a purely local melodrama, for Glasgow audiences only.
JOYCE McMILLAN
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BLACK WATCH, DRILL HALL, EDINBURGH, 5 AUGUST 2006
THE signs were good. Playwright Gregory Burke, left, had burst onto the scene with the sweaty political thriller Gagarin Way in 2001. Director John Tiffany, formerly of the Traverse and Paines Plough, had built a reputation for lucid productions of new work laced with punchy choreography. Behind them were the unprecedented resources of the new National Theatre of Scotland.
The subject matter was timely, too. Not only had the Black Watch regiment served in Iraq, they were also reeling from the news that they were to be merged into the new Royal Regiment of Scotland, a move many considered highly damaging to morale. Burke had interviewed squaddies back from Iraq, and drew directly on their words to assemble a script that explored the effect of living in the cannon's mouth on these young men's pride, camaraderie, machismo, humour and bravado. Rather than attempt a purely naturalistic interpretation of this documentary material, Tiffany and his excellent cast teased out the poetry and tenderness underlying army rituals, using stylised movement, and shocked their audience with a sickening coup de theatre.
Swiftly sold out at the Fringe, where it won a raft of awards, Black Watch also received a South Bank Show award in January. It has just begun a Scottish tour and a London transfer is due this year.
ANDREW BURNET
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THE CHEVIOT, THE STAG AND THE BLACK, BLACK OIL; ABERDEEN ARTS CENTRE; 24 MARCH 1973
IT WAS officially held that the Highlands had no use for theatre. Fiddles and bodhrans, yes. Perhaps even a balalaika. But theatre? That was for urban sophisticates. Playwright and director John McGrath was out to rubbish this theory. Having founded 7:84 Theatre Company in England, he and Liz MacLennan established a Scottish splinter group.
McGrath had been hatching a play that would expose the capitalists and aristocracy as culpable for the exploitation of rural Scots, from the Highland Clearances to the oil boom of the early 1970s. Crucially, he aimed to show that "the future is not predetermined"; that resistance was not futile. Of course it had to reach Highland audiences - it was about them; their land, their history. And of course its form should appeal to them. Thus the ceilidh play was born, embracing singing, dancing, broad comedy and agitprop.
McGrath's team would later become luminaries of Scottish theatre, among them Alex Norton, Bill Paterson, John Bett and Liz's brother David MacLennan, who went on to establish Wildcat Theatre Company and A Play, a Pie and a Pint. The set was a giant pop-up picture book, created by John Byrne. Imagine them, crammed together in the tour van, chugging along those winding roads, fomenting revolution. Of course, the Highlanders loved it - the touring circuit thrives to this day.
ANDREW BURNET
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ANE SATYRE OF THE THRIE ESTAITES, LINLITHGOW PALACE, 6 JANUARY 1540
The cornerstone of all our theatre
FIRST presented in front of King James V and his court at Linlithgow Palace, during the Twelfth Night feast of 1540, Sir David Lindsay's great Satyre Of The Thrie Estaites is the cornerstone of all Scottish theatre, a mighty satirical pageant of the human condition - and of the body politic - that not only became a huge popular success in its day, but seems to re-emerge at every major turning point in Scotland's theatre history. It is our only surviving vernacular drama from the age when Scotland was a state in its own right, its tongue not only the language of the streets and of popular comedy, but of law, religion, poetry, romance, philosophical argument and political power. The language of the play, therefore, has a range, a confidence, an urbanity, and a rich comic sophistication that was soon to become rare in Scots-language writing; and it's perhaps small wonder that its key 20th century revivals - by the legendary Tyrone Guthrie at Edinburgh's Assembly Hall during the Edinburgh Festival of 1948, and again by the Scottish Theatre Company in 1986 - have both had an electrifying effect on Scottish audiences and artists, alerting them to all the huge forgotten possibilities of the national language and culture.
What's most striking about Lindsay's great play, though, is how strongly its story of sleaze and corruption among the mighty, and of good John Commonweal's effort to make his voice heard in setting things right, reflects elements that remain powerful in Scottish drama to this day, from the radical politics and bred-in-the-bone egalitarianism to the taste for ribald pantomime and rousing song. In 1554, the play appeared before a huge and delighted crowd in an all-day performance at Edinburgh's Greenside, where the Playhouse Theatre now stands. Yet, within four years, the text was being ceremonially burned, as a harbinger of reform that the beleaguered princes of the Church could no longer tolerate; and which they almost succeeded in erasing for ever, from the slim but vivid history of theatre in Scotland.
JOYCE McMILLAN
REST OF THE TOP 20
5 The Douglas, Canongate Theatre, Edinburgh, 14 December 1756
6 Huis Clos, Traverse, Edinburgh, 2 January 1963
7 The Slab Boys, Traverse, Edinburgh, 6 April 1978
8 Hamlet, Citizens' Theatre, Glasgow, 4 September 1970
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 19 87
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 you can now read the whole list and the reasons for each choice. Read our film top 20 in the paper from Monday.
