SELECTED PLAYS
Decky Does a Bronco (2000)
First produced by Grid Iron
First directed by Ben Harrison
Cast: 8 m.
A group of kids “bronco” swings in a park (kicking them over the bar at high speed). It’s more sport than vandalism. Decky is the only boy who hasn’t yet mastered this death-defying gymnastic skill. One day he doesn’t show up. As the boys discover the horrible truth about why Decky isn’t with them they are replaced in the play by their adult selves, who have been watching the action from the side lines.
Gridiron’s iconic production toured the swing parks of the world in the early noughties and again ten years later.
Images Murdo Macleod & Douglas Jones
ORPHANS (2022)
First produced by The National Theatre of Scotland
First directed by Cora Bissett
Music and Lyrics by Roddy Hart and Tommy Reilly
Cast: 15 in the first production.
A musical based on Peter Mullen’s cult movie from the 90s, following four siblings who are mourning their mother the night before her funeral. As a storm batters Glasgow the family are blown apart, scattered across the city on increasingly mad and violent quests…armed, blood soaked, lost and self-righteous…they each have to battle their own way back to the church, back to each other, in time to see that coffin carried to its final resting place...
This is an epic book musical, written to the Rogers and Hammerstein model, but soaked in certificate 18 language and content. A working class opera that moves from comedy to tragedy, from the broad to the detailed, with integral, hooky songs that speak of Scottish pop and indie as much as they do of classic musical theatre showstoppers.
The first production was the NTS’s response to the ending of Lockdown. An all-guns-blazing flagship of a show, which employed as many people from the industry as possible and played in the biggest venues available. (The constant postponements and rearrangements for lockdown meant that the only Glasgow venue available for the opening week was The Armadillo Concert Hall.)
Images Mihaela Bodlovic
ORPHANS (2022)
First produced by The National Theatre of Scotland
First directed by Cora Bissett
Music and Lyrics by Roddy Hart and Tommy Reilly
Cast: 15 in the first production.
A musical based on Peter Mullan’s cult movie from the 90s, following four siblings the night before their mother's funeral. As a storm batters Glasgow the family are blown apart and scattered across the city on increasingly mad and violent quests…armed, blood soaked, lost and self-righteous…they each have to battle their own way back to the church, back to each other, in time to see that coffin carried to its final resting place.
This is an epic book musical, written to the Rodgers and Hammerstein model, but soaked in certificate 18 language and content. A working class opera that moves from comedy to tragedy, from the broad to the detailed, with integral, hooky songs that speak of Scottish pop and indie as much as they do of classic musical theatre showstoppers.
The first production was the NTS’s response to the ending of Lockdown. An all-guns-blazing flagship of a show, which employed as many people from the industry as possible and played in the biggest venues available. (The constant postponements and rearrangements for Covid meant that the only Glasgow venue available for the opening week was The Armadillo Concert Hall.)
Images Mihaela Bodlovic
A RESPECTABLE WIDOW TAKES TO VULGARITY (2013)
First produced by The Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh.
First directed by Orla O’Loughlin
Cast: 1f 1m. Retirement age woman and a young man.
A 50 min one-act play.
A well-to-do woman meets a working class guy at her husband’s funeral, who, in his panic at having to talk to the widow, stumbles into describing the deceased as “a lovely old cunt”. Annabelle has never heard that particular, Scottish “usage”. Intrigued, and looking for a distraction from her grief, she tracks down young Jim and persuades him to teach her how to swear properly. It’s My Fair Lady in reverse.
Originally staged as a Breakfast Play at The Traverse during the Fringe, this play really found success in A Play, A Pie and A Pint – Glasgow’s lunchtime theatre. It’s had a number of productions over the years, including a version which toured to New York. It was also filmed for BBC Scotland.
FATBAWS
(2020)
First produced by The National Theatre of Scotland/BBC Scotland
First directed by Peter Mullan
Cast: 1 m (although there’s no reason it has to be a guy)
A 15 minute comic monologue.
A man is confronted by a jackdaw in his garden. The bird wants him to put fatballs in the bird feeders rather than peanuts, but the man refuses because the birds eat the fatballs too quickly. A battle ensues about the stewardship of the natural world.
Written for the NTS/BBC for their Scenes for Survival online series during lockdown. It was directed and performed by Peter Mullan and watched over a million times on YouTube. It was subsequently screened on BBC Scotland and nominated for a Scottish BAFTA.
Images Peter Mullan
charlie sonata
(2017)
First produced by The Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh.
First directed by Mathew Lenton.
Cast: 4f, 4m. Sometimes performed with a narrator reading the stage directions.
This is the last day in the life of a bewildered, heartbroken, sweet-souled alcoholic known as Chic. His friend’s daughter has been in a car accident and lies in a coma. Chic gets it into his dazed head that it’s Sleeping Beauty and he is the Handsome Prince. If he can just make it through the thorns of the city and get to her hospital bed then one kiss could give them all their happy ever after.
A play that has as many devotees as it does detractors. But it’s probably the play most commonly cited as a “favourite”.
yer granny
(2015)
Based on La Nona by Roberto Cossa
First produced by The National Theatre of Scotland
First directed by Graham McLaren
Cast: 4f 3m
It's 1977. And as the town prepares for a Jubilee visit from the Queen, a working class family, whose fish and chip shop business is on the rocks, are literally eaten out of house and home by a monstrous Granny who has a preposterous, unstoppable appetite.
An adaptation of the macabre Argentinian hit, this is a mainstage comedy which hurtles from the boulevard to the gutter…first performed by a cast of comedy greats: Gregor Fisher, Maureen Beattie, Jonathon Watson, Paul Riley, Barbara Rafferty, Brian Pettifer and Louise McCarthy.
Images Manuel Harlan
Too Fast
(2011)
First produced by National Theatre Connections
Cast: 8f 4m – all ages of high school. Often staged with larger, expanded casts.
A young teenage girl, DD, has somehow wangled her singing group into performing at the funeral of an older girl who was killed in a car crash. DD sees it as a way of enhancing their emotional backstory for Britain’s Got Talent. The play is set “backstage” in the church, where all the pupils who are helping during the service wait for their big moment. It builds to a dreamlike climax where the group sing and we see the dead girl confront her boyfriend, who ran away from the crash and has since become a local pariah.
Written for NT Connections and performed that year by thirty five Youth Theatres up and down the UK. A very popular play with Youth Theatres to this day, with constant productions all over the world. The published text has teaching notes written by Anthony Banks.
Image Simon Annand
i can go anywhere
(2019)
First produced by The Traverse Theatre
First directed by Eve Nicol
Cast: 2 m.
A young asylum seeker tracks down a former journalist, looking for a reference for his Substantive Interview. “Jimmy” is seeking asylum in the UK on the basis that he’s a Mod, and Britain is the home of Mods. He is refusing to tell his real backstory…his real tragedy….even to reveal his real name. All he wants to talk to Stevie about is The Who and Peter Blake and The Jam and scooters and Liam Gallagher. Stevie once wrote a book about the power of youth cults, like Mod, but his views have soured since then. Right at this moment he’s going through a painful break up and has no patience for Jimmy’s reluctance to face up to reality - despite clearly sharing that trait. Stevie can't help but use Jimmy as a punching bag and soon has him embroiled in his own mess.
Images Lara Cappelli
the whip hand
(2017)
First produced by Birmingham Rep and The Traverse Theatre
First directed by Tessa Walker.
Cast: 2f 3m.
A white, middle-aged, working class guy, Dougie Bell, has been contacted by an organisation informing him that he is the last living relative of a plantation owner who at one time owned slaves. The organisation are asking Dougie to provide financial reparations. And Dougie is delighted – finally a purpose! But the only money which he has access to is saved for his daughter’s university education. She’s set to begin first year after the summer. He breaks the news to his ex-wife, her new husband and his daughter that he wants all of that money back. They sense that Dougie is a victim of a scam…and that his motivation isn’t quite as righteous as it seems. Dougie’s nephew – a quiet teenager and a person of colour – is Dougie’s only ally. To begin with.
A festival hit in Edinburgh at The Traverse.
Images David Monteith Hodge
our bad magnet
(2000)
First produced by The Tron Theatre, Glasgow.
First directed by Jim Twaddale
Cast: 4 m.
A group of pals grow up in the small town of Girvan, on the Ayrshire coast. We see them at the ages of 9, 19, and 29. One of their gang goes missing, presumed dead, leaving behind a suitcase full of fairy tales which he wrote when he was a kid. The question of what to do with these stories (which are brought to life onstage) binds the friends together and pulls them apart.
Although the play had a successful revival and tour in Scotland, co-produced by Borderline Theatre Co, it really found its home in South Korea, where it has been performed, almost continually, for over a decade. There are fan groups for the play, who have produced merchandise, songs and fan fiction based around the characters. The play also has had high profile, hit productions in Japan.
Promises Promises
(2010)
First produced by Random Accomplice
First directed by Johnny McKnight
Cast: A one-woman play for an actress of retirement age.
A 90 min monologue.
A strict, self-righteous teacher, Maggie Brodie, is brought out of disgraced retirement to cover a day in her local primary school. She meets a six year old girl recently arrived from Somalia who doesn’t speak. She is told that community leaders believe the girl’s silence has something to do with witchcraft – they want to perform an exorcism that day – but Maggie refuses to allow it. She discovers that the girl hasn’t spoken since her circumcision. Maggie decides to take revenge on the girl’s behalf…in an act of violence which has much more to do with her own past than the girl’s future.
The premise of the elective-mute six year old girl who has survived genital mutilation, and the subsequent exorcism ceremony in a classroom, is based on a real event.
The first version of this play, starring Joanna Tope, toured extensively and had a run in New York under the title The Promise. Joanna Tope was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for her performance. There have also been notable productions in Dundee and in Montreal.
Images Niall Walker
Man's best friend
(2022)
First produced by A Play, A Pie and A Pint
First directed by Jemima Levick
Cast: 1 m.
A one hour monologue.
A man loses his wife during the Covid Lockdown. His neighbours attempt to rouse him from his grief by asking him to walk their dogs. What starts as a one-off favour soon becomes a full time job. One day he loses control of all the dogs and they vanish into the country park. As he hunts them down he discovers the body of a young man who has died whilst out jogging. This discovery opens him up to his own loss. Drawn back to the park, he meets the dead man’s wife and realises that he can help her, just as his neighbours helped him.
Written for the actor Jonathon Watson, who has also starred in Yer Granny and The Whip Hand.
Photo: Jonny Scott
fever dream: southside
(2015)
First produced by The Citizens, Glasgow
First directed by Dominic Hill
Cast: 2f 6m.
A heatwave is blasting Govanhill, on the Southside of Glasgow. That, and yet another missing person hunt, is forcing a host of characters to unravel and hit the streets. The sleep-deprived madness of two new parents seems to be manifesting itself in the behaviour of an entire neighbourhood: a property manager is making a play to become an oligarch; a performance artist believes that she, or her doppelganger, has been murdered; and two door-to-door missionaries are hunting for their lost pet - a pterodactyl called Terry, which only one of the pair can see. A Glasgow fantasia.
A play which divides the audience right down the middle. On the day after the first preview the director had a letter on his desk demanding his resignation. Yet to this day it’s often named as a moment of inspiration for a generation of theatre artists with Terry being the OG of many an onstage “monster”.
Images Tim Morozzo
mancub
(2005)
Adapted from the novel “The Flight of the Cassowary” by John LeVert.
First produced by Vanishing Point.
First directed by Mathew Lenton.
Cast: Unlimited. Professional productions tend to use three young actors – a narrator and two others – but Youth Theatres have staged it with casts of 30+.
A teenage schoolboy becomes obsessed with nature, to the point that he believes he can transform himself into animals. He also starts to see everyone around him – at school and at home – as wild creatures in a threatened environment.
Mancub was revived to be part of the National Theatre of Scotland’s debut season.
the sheriff of kalamaki (2023)
First Produced by A Play A Pie and a Pint
First directed by Jemima Levick
Cast: 2m
60 min one act play.
Kalamaki is a tourist trap at the southern tip of the Greek island of Zante – and to Dion, it’s heaven. He came here on holiday thirty years ago and he’s never gone home. After working in every job Kalamaki has to offer, Dion has finally found his perfect position as “The Sheriff” – getting paid by a local cop to keep an eye on the troublesome Brits abroad and nipping disasters in the bud.
This newfound gig gives Dion some pride but when his brother Ally arrives out of the blue looking for help and trying to “save” him, Dion has to face a harsh reality check.
For a man of morals and faith like Ally, Kalamaki is a hellscape. But after being made to face up to the mess he’s made of his life and the pain he’s caused those closest to him, it’s a hell that Ally welcomes with open arms. Maybe he’s the one who needs to be saved…and maybe the only person who can do it is The Sheriff.
This production cast two real brothers in the roles of Alfie and Dion: Paul and Stephen McCole.
Photos: Tommy Ga-ken-Wan
