Lovers of the Doric are in for a treat this week when a touring theatre company brings a play to their doorstep. The Splinters Theatre Company will be at aboyne and New Deer with a drama called The Roup by Bob adams. The story line is bitter sweet. For the old couple selling up the day of the roup is a sad one however, there is also plenty of fun - and a bit of love interest.
- The Press and Journal

set in the 1870;s the play is a mysterious and atmospheric Gothic tale, dealing with sex, death and public health. "as brothels and old-time religion nestle up in the back streets, auld reekie's well-heeled self image is chillingly blighted by death and disease. Obvious gothic antecedents here are Stevenson and Conan Doyle, but there are nods too at David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick. In its brutal depiction of how sexual plague decimates societies great and small, however, it shows that even Trainspotting's darker roots go way back."
- Neil Cooper, The Herald

"Arnott's fascinating play questions the morality of Britain's spies and the spooky underworld of intelligence agents. Ever since the Iraq war, David Kelly's suicide and that deceptive dossier about weapons of mass destruction, spies and their masters have incurred suspicion about their motives and honesty. Cyprus fuels these anxieties by suggesting that the intelligence services' secret, unaccountable and duplicitous procedures may incite, not diminish, terrorism. The dramatic noose tightens thrillingly as the tables turn to devastating effect, and family ties are frailer than loyalty to the old ministerial firm."
- Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard (Critics Choice)

This fine, subtle play allows us to see those things not appreciated by the luckless characters, and perhaps to understand and forgive. The work uses a fantasy situation to dissect reality in a way realism never could, offering a dissection of the inadaquacy if the emotional vocabulary in use in Scotland and voicing a protest against those responsible for that situation. and if it is set in Scotland its resonances can be felt far beyond.
- Joseph Farrell, literary critic

based on the life of Jimmy Boyle, is a searing attack on society in general and the Scottish penal system in particular

People are forever claiming to be presenting undiscovered wee gems on the Fringe, but this really is an undiscovered wee gem. James Smith was a highly popular playwright in 19th-century Edinburgh, since sunk into unforgiving oblivion; but this completely delightful short comic monologue, exhumed and adapted by Donald Campbell, fully deserves the daylight. Nancy Sleekit is no woman to meddle with. She regales us, in rich and expressive Scots, with tales of her three husbands, their manifold failings and their, um, untimely ends. along the way we get wonderful Hogarthian cameos of the low life of auld Reekie, acerbic asides that would wither a stone, and a feisty proto-feminism.
- Catherine Lockerbie, The Scotsman

Describes the life of the poet Robert Burns, as seen through the eyes of his wife Jean armour. "This is a splendid play - a rich tapestry of pointed dialogue blended with beautiful soliloquies from Jean armour and embellished with Burns' own poetry and song. The subtlety of Campbell's style is also most impressive. at no point does he stress any particular line. Instead, he allows the contradictions that seem to have been inherent in Burns' personality to manifest themselves in front of the key women who knew him - and at the end of the day he invites us, the audience to judge the man for ourselves - assuming, of course, we have the nerve to."
- Ian Mowat, The Herald

Donald Campbell's powerful two-act play is based, he tells us, on history. In 1876 six fishers from Clyth, in Caithness, were lost, leaving five widows and twenty-six children in a state of acute poverty. Out of that plain and terrible history Mr Campbell has made a play that may be expected to grip the attention of an audience, not only through pity and terror (for it is not a tragedy so much as the story of how strong-minded people, and especially women, reacted to calamity), but through a simple story enacted in a straightforward way, a matter of fact heightened by skilful fiction . . . Placed within a context of their everyday life, the widows' story is likely to be almost unbearably moving. But it is true: those widows had to bear it.
- Robert Garioch, Lines Review

Shows in a naturalistic setting, but with poetic resonances, a father son tension in an imprisoning, middle class social setting. "In Stewart Conn's play The aquarium a woman asks, 'What's the use of loving someone if you don't show it?' This is the key to the bitter conflict between father and son that Conn so vividly presents. Their hostility does not stem from a lack of affection, but from their inability to express goodwill towards each other. Their relationship steeped in rancour . . . neither is prepared to understand the other, or to make the gesture that would bring them closer together."
- allen Wright, The Scotsman

a lecturer's double fixation with Herman Melville and with a young student, leads to a fantasy fusion of sex and guilt, comedy and pain.

Focuses on a Scots mercenary under trial in an African state, and on his uncomprehending family and girl, at home; mixing black comedy with social comment and bemoaning with corrosion and loss of human life. "Play Donkey centres on a young Scottish mercenary awaiting an 'exemplary' trial in 'some emergent African state'. Like a child's game of cat's cradle, it links his destiny with some of those most closely affected by it - his bewildered parents, two girls, the clever London lawyer who flies out to plead his cause, knowing it is already as good as lost. Conn's strength is that he refuses to take sides . . . Laughter is written into the play, and deftly so. It is laughter only to stop you weeping."
- Cordelia Oliver, The Guardian

When his friend is stabbed, a young lad from a housing scheme falls in with a gang. The terrible revenge he takes at random brings disaster on himself and the family of his victim.

as de Quincey scribbles away in abject poverty, buoyed up by narcotic sustenance, desperately trying to meet deadlines for Blackwood his publisher, he is accompanied by a pickpocket and simpleton, Willy. The brilliant loquacious addict and the affably childish dimwit are drawn together by circumstance and a mutual need. The wonderful mastery of image in the author's work is reflected in the dialogue.
Robert Gore Langton

Christopher Deans' play another Space is a fast moving multi-character drama about the lives of young people from a variety of backgrounds. The play focuses on the various communications and identities (real and fabricated) that young people use in daily life and in the virtual environment. The title reflects a number of situations within the play: the freedom and danger of virtual contact; the struggle of an agoraphobic to leave her house; the trans-national communication made possible through the internet; and the cosmic event of a solar eclipse which frames the timeframe of the play. The play tracks the journey of numerous young people searching for new ways of being or expressing themselves. Teenage runaway Eve tries to make sense of her broken relationship with her mother by going online as a failing 40 year old mother. Her mysterious friend and co-resident in the homeless hostel, Viv, is leading a double life as a prostitute and attempting to cope with the reality of being pregnant at such a young age. Meanwhile Hannah, the agoraphobic, having been forced to leave the house due to a theft of her computer, begins to discover a real life friendship with Pip. alongside these scene are comic interludes between virtual soul mates Monkey Boy and Monkey Girl who discover their kinship online and slowly inch towards an actual meeting. all the journeys beautifully reflect the awkwardness and exploration that form part of the teenage process of making sense of the world. The play is a challenging and varied piece that creates layered characters for a large number of young performers, tackling personal dilemmas within a complex and exciting framework."
Lorenzo Mele

This play is an adaptation of Christopher Brookmyres novel of the same name. The title refers to the anecdote that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. The story is often used as a metaphor for the inability of people to react to significant changes that occur gradually. Here it is used to draw attention to the activities and dogma of the Catholic Church. It is a macabre tale of how the church pits itself against politicians, who are against section 28 and pro same sex marriages, to tarnish their reputations and gain the moral high ground. They stop at nothing  blackmail, child pornography and murder to achieve their ends. The plans backfire and Elspeth, the more enlightened Catholic is left to question her beliefs.

Here's a cheeky modern take on a classic of 18th century theatre that swaps the elegant interiors of Seville for down-market 21st century Benidorm. and the way Beaumarchais' densely packed language is replaced by a rip-roaring West of Scotland twang is pure dead brilliant. Based on The Barber of Seville, Christopher Deans' Cut to the Chase is aimed at youngsters. But I'll defy anyone over 20 not to enjoy the sheer pace and comedy of this show."
- Kenneth Speirs, The Mail on Sunday

Set in an unspecified Scottish town . . . Christopher Deans' new work Free Fall explores the effects of the now 25 year old right to buy" policy and how it has [resulted in] . . . pensioners being evicted from their family home as a result of not maintaining mortgage payments on their ex-council house . . . it will always find a forum which inspires and prompts topical discussion and Debate"
- Louisa McEwan, The Herald

The pope is dead. The race to replace him, led by a corrupt Scottish Cardinal, is on. Christopher Deans' play Smells and Bells . . . is a long, dark, bitter cry of rage against the attitude of the Catholic Church in Scotland to gay sexuality. Its thesis seems to be that the Catholic faith - with its powerful, sensuous imagery of pierced bodies, bleeding hearts, and flesh transfigured into spirit - has a way of penetrating with exceptional power, into the erotic imagination of vulnerable men, and then twisting it into a nightmare of denial, self-hatred and lies . . . It's immensely potent and evocative: but what it evokes is an atmosphere dictated by those who equate gay sex with sleaze and bad endings, now and Forever.
- Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman

a brilliantly funny fly-on-the-wall snapshot of eight lives careering out of control. Small-time crook and aspirant pharmaceutical entrepreneur Willie Dobie's best laid plans unravel when human nature takes its predictably unpredictable course . . .

"Janet is so resolutely upbeat, so adept at finding the bright side, that any of life's disappointments, become material for her sharp wit. Her jokes are of the if-you-don't-laugh-you'll-cry variety and the play imperceptibly shifts tone, from hilarious observations to a darker exposition. although Janet berates herself for 'being maudling' Downie's play never lapses into sentimental pathos. Subtly emotive, this is a beautifully observed piece, played with great warmth and assurance by the writer."
- Guardian

"an appealing mixture of comedy and pathos that straddles continents as well as emotions. Intriguing that anne Downie has taken individual notions of independence and co-dependence and used them as a metaphor for a country forever on the cusp. The extended routine on hormone replacement therapy is priceless!"
- The Herald

"One of the play's great strengths is that it offers a fairly serious critique of the bingo phenomenon without discounting the powerful reasons why people with little money, and less choice about how to spend their leisure, play the game - the escapism, the cosy atmosphere, the human contact, the combination of mild excitement with an absolute freedom from the stress of decision making. all the characters are in some sense 'Waiting on One' - waiting for the one number, the one stroke of fate, the job, the loving touch, the new grandchild; the bingo game seen as a metaphor for their habit of powerlessness. Intriguing and effective theatre, pulling together the elements of character, dialogue, storyline and human observation that are essential to a reassessment of an important area of working class experience."
- The Guardian

"The most eye catching aspect of Downie's play is its capacity, recalling O'Casey, to portray the life of a colourful community. The work, which eschews facile sentimentality, gives voice to a wealth of striking characters and is a gripping and moving one."
- The Scotsman

"Witchcraft is in the news again, but there are no forced contemporary parallels. It is a Gothic tale, the telling of which has that indispensable element of insider sincerity. Ms Downie is neither an ironist nor someone looking on the characters and their doings from above. She is motivated by the same fascination with the enigmatic figure of Janet Douglas that gripped 17th Century Glasgow. Her play is as neat a piece of storytelling theatre as could be wished."
- The Scotsman

"It can be no easy thing to find yourself, as travelling folk in Scotland long have, simultaneously the repository of conventional people's romanticism and the focus of their dark fears. It takes a real dramatist like anne Downie, with her rich, enchanting and moving new play The Yellow On the Broom to give full expression to both aspects. The lyrical lilt, the variety and vividness of character and scene make for memorable theatre."
- The Scotsman

No more beautiful image of the play could have been found. In the long closing suicidal speech, when Mister at last joins the safe majority and lies down beside the effigy of Nelson to become an effigy himself, Eveling draws the strands of imagery together in one of the finest pieces of contemporary dramatic poetry we have heard in a long while.
- Gavin Miller, The Listener

Sue Glover's short play is an absorbing account which not only offers colourful vignettes of Mackintosh and Eardley's quite different lives and styles of work but also makes cogent parallels with the work of women artists today . . .By focusing on fascinating personal details Glover abstracts individual experiences to the general, thus addressing the marginalisation of women artists with sweeping effective strokes.
- Sara Villiers, The Herald

Inside this bubble lives Tuscan, who as a baby survived an industrial accident which removed all his natural immunities, and condemned him to a sterile life as the bubble boy of the title. Now 17, he is posing enormous problems for the research team who look after him. The headlines have died away, the glamour has faded, hopes of a cure have dwindled, and the boy is now rebellious. In the short length of the play Sue Glover sketches with considerable skill many of the issues raised by the boy - industry's indifference to its casualties, news values, the compromising of ethical standards, and the responsibilities and limits of freedom.
- Trevor Griffiths, The Scotsman 1981

Sacred Hearts is not what you expect from the title - thank God for that. It's about five prostitutes who occupy the local church to protest about their conditions, especially police indifference to the predations of a serial killer. Sue Glover's new play is based on a prostitutes' strike in Lyons in 1975, the year of the Yorkshire Ripper's first murder. . .The girls take possession of the Church, and out come the fags and the wine. They are safe, looked after by the priest and the ambivalent caretaker, "God's House belongs to everyone. Or does it? Despite the sharp Glaswegian patter, these words always sound sinister. The play reveals the precariousness of their existence and hypocrisy of society's attitudes to them, the dangers they run and the risks they take.
- Joy Hendry, The Guardian 1994

a riveting and magical piece of theatre that takes as its premise the legend of the Silkies, a race of seals who are known to come ashore, take on human form, marry unsuspecting humans, bear them children and then go back to the sea. In Sue Glover's wonderful interpretation of this folk-story we are transported, body and soul to a fishing community steeped in such superstitions.
- The London Fringe

exploring the emotions which fuel and surround ambition, and the conflict between party politics and single-issue activism.

The story of a boy who becomes a king, is a simple fable filled with surprisingly complex resonances. In common with the very best in storytelling for children, it confronts the big moral issues surrounding the way in which one makes one's way in the world and through life - self-interest vying with self-sacrifice, the greed of the individual with the needs of the collective. The boy-king Matt is undoubtedly the hero of the tale but it is his human faults and frailties as well as his intrepid spirit that keep us on the edge of our seats right up to the suspense-filled ending. This is a play written for children that children would have great fun playing for themselves

The Salt Wound ushers in not only the monumental sea but also an almost oppressive awareness of a close-knit fishing community with all its orthodoxies, traditions and celebrations. Greenhorn does a convincing job of taking the classical passions of Greek tragedy and transposing them to a modern setting. Everyone is right and wrong. No-one can do anything about it . . . It holds an audience gripped.
- The Herald

about the radical teacher and Holocaust victim Janusz Korczak's declaration of Children's Rights

"David Greig's fine adaptation produces a clarity of narrative and a simple, resonant language that renders the epic accessible."
Robert Thompson, Herald

The action takes place in Bunillidh, a town on the northern coast of Scotland and on the neighbouring beach. In some scenes the beach and the town are indistinguishable. The play or spoken opera raises the issues surrounding the location of a nuclear reactor in a remote part of Scotland. The play charts the survival of the communities of the North Coast across fifty years of living with the nuclear industry - from advent to epiphany.

The idea of the setting of this play is that it takes place at a ting, a viking parliament or meeting, where the problems of the day were sorted out or at least discussed. As this play is taken from an Icelandic saga that would originally have been spoken or told, the idea is that this is what is happening, so the actors have to understand that they are addressing the audience and not necessarily each other, but at some points they will have to do this, obviously. A lot of the action takes place at sea and a lot of it takes place on the hoof. These people very rarely stood still. - author introduction

a gothic Victorian promenade show through the secret backstage spaces of the Citizens Theatre. Out of the shadows comes a motley crew of sopranos, hoofers, chorines and wig-masters. They tell a haunting, mournful and darkly comic tale of yet another chorus girl burning to death beneath the stage while the show carried on above her head. Can somebody put a stop to these incidents? Will there be a bloodthirsty coup or a red velvet revolution? The management are literally getting away with murder. . .Sub Rosa has been created especially for the Citizens by David Leddy, who has been described as a 'theatrical maverick' (Financial Times), 'one of the most interesting dramatic writers on the Scottish scene' (Scotsman) and 'the rising star of Scottish theatre' (Observer). The promenade show will take an audience of just 15 people through the secret, backstage areas of the theatre.

This play is a study of seven men, six gunners and an eighteen year old lance bombardier, trapped in a futile situation which drives the wildest of them to increasingly extreme subordination. It is Germany in 1954, a bitterly cold winter. The gun they guard is obsolete. The woeful events of the play are unfolded with biting irony. This isn't just a piece about falling out between lonely soldiers, or about a particular idiocy of cold war strategy. It is about a man who sees his own life as ludicrous and outworn because he has been placed in a situation so dehumanised that he can only react mockingly.
- Penelope Gilliatt, The Observer

Brechtian, knockabout, satirical, musical play on the class struggle. Using a game show format, the participants never get ahead of the game and in life never have enough money despite all their efforts to escape the poverty trap.

Out of Sight, Hover Through the Fog, Oranges and Lemons and If you want to Know the Time  John McGrath at his scintillating best  four funny and satirical short plays written in the seventies at a time of social unrest and change retaining social commentary still relevant today.

What can we learn from the past that can help us build a better Scotland today? "The latest skirmish in a continuing war against capitalism and the ills thereof . . . full of vitality, humour, good songs and music, polemical overstatement and blistering home truths . . ."
- Cordelia Olivier, The Guardian

Nightclass showcases the formidable range of John McGrath's skills. Songs and agitprop are intercut deftly, often to ironic effect, with nuanced interplay between the five characters, the dialogue switching between sharp wit and painful revelation. Four lonely people drift into a night class on the English or British constitution. Each hopes that for a few quid a qualified expert will show them how that elusive monster holds the secrets to their plights and desperation. McGrath quickly has them relating to each other on the basis of rules as deep and unwritten as those of the notoriously elusive constitution itself. Their youngish, patronising lefty lecturer persuades them to fiddle the class numbers so that he will be paid. He tries and fails to get off with the young, grieving woman in between his attacks on the Monarchy and bogus Democracy. The lady wife of a local magistrate takes the hump and rats on him, precisely at the point that the others sense they've a lot they can learn from each other. The beauty of this piece lies in three things. There are the tensions between positions asserted and the nuances of how the interactions unfold. There is the craft with which it is tied together. There is the ending in which the characters, regretting again what might have been, wander off through the corridors of powerlessness. Nightclass is an excellent place to study and appreciate John McGrath's huge talents.
- Bob Tait, Reviewer and Critic

The idea for The Road to Mandalay came from the students in their first workshops with John [McGrath] and Liz [MacLennan]. But this is not a play that 'dumbs down' as many plays for children do. This play is also great fun for adults and communities. When I read the second and third drafts, I did, as a headteacher, have some anxieties on whether this was within their scope. It expects the very highest commitment and skill. But our students rose to the challenge and particularly after their workshops turned in performances that professional actors would be proud of. It remains a pivotal experience in their lives and mine.
- Dame Tamsyn Imison, Headteacher Hampstead School 1984-2000

It is eminently fitting that Ane Satyre of the Threi Estaites should find itself resurrected in modern incarnation . . . Sir David Lyndsay's sixteenth century masterpiece was first revived in 1948, in a production by Tyrone Guthrie, which has passed into legend: a vigorous bawdy pageant far removed from the refined dramatic conventions of the time. It has been updated by John McGrath. The medieval work mocked the corruption of the church, aristocracy and merchant class; this reworking lampoons politicians, non-elected powers, money grubbers and above all the media  the fourth estate now added to the original trinity. A battle for the soul of a new Scotland proceeds.' - Catherine Lockerbie

Swings and Roundabouts may be different in style from previous productions but it has all the wit, perspicacity and political awareness of earlier 7:84 plays . . . the play shows clearly that class can cause the people trapped in it's social conventions to be utterly miserable, whether they are wealthy or poor.
- Mary Brennan, The Herald

Nails the old myth that left-wing theatre must necessarily be grey.
- Michael Billington, The Guardian

"As a dramatist, Tom McGrath's great strength is to pare things down to the fewest possible words, the sparsest settings, only the most elemental action. His extraordinary stroke with Electra is to seize on the brevities of Greek tragedy and whittle them down even further. The result: a lethal little piece, bristling with menacing meanings and consequences, representing a total minefield. We watch in horror as the characters blunder through it. His Electra is self-righteously correct, mad and disastrous. His Orestes, rather than god-enlightened, is a hesitant teenager blinded by a vision of new beginnings. All the characters have a dubious mixture of self-deluding, self-interested and high-minded motives. All are fatally credulous, believing messengers and messages even less reliably credentialed than CNN, Fox or the BBC. This piece zings with more compressed meaning than many ten times its length. It resonates powerfully for all of us watching similar stories unfolding in the Middle East, Congo, Rwanda, the USA and Northern Ireland."
Bob Tait, theatre reviewer and literary critic

based on the life of Jimmy Boyle, is a searing attack on society in general and the Scottish penal system in particular

Part biographical drama, part-staging of some of Stan and Ollie's most fondly remembered cinema scenes. A charming theatrical work.

A partially autobiographical piece which arose out of the stoke he suffered in 2003, McGrath has put himself in the picture via the character of sam McCredie, a troublesome old bugger who'll go anything but gently into the good night.

armed soldiers and police on the street

Fifteen short confessional monologues edited by Maggie Rose and written by Lynsey Murdoch, Alexander Hutchison, Tom Murray, Stewart Ennis, Skye Loneragan, Iain Heggie, Eliza Shackleton, Mahmood Farzan, Pauline Goldsmith, Mary Wells, Andrew Dallmeyer, Wilma G. Stark, Martin OConnor and Alicia Devine.

Public and private issues collide dramatically in post-Union Edinburgh. Judy Steel's powerful re-telling of Scott's masterpiece 'The Heart of Midlothian' combines humour, passion and tension as Jeannie faces a dilemma to save her sister's life.

My researches at the time led me to discover, first, John Buchans early, Borderset, short stories, and also Wilsons Tales of the Borders. Amongst the latter, Willie Wastles Account of His Wife sprang from its dusty pages with a vivacity that belied its age. It was a riposte to Robert Burns popular song Willie Wastle dwalt on Tweed, composed at the Crook Inn in Tweedsmuir. In the song, the unfortunate wife of Willie is described by the national bard in terms that must be the most unflattering ever penned on a woman. Wilsons story was Willies defence of her. - Playwright

Blooded is a rites of passage play about four sixteen year old girls coming to terms with the loss of childhood and its innocence. The once close bonds between the girls unravel, at times humourously and at times tragically. Wright's vivid portrayal of growing up makes compelling reading.