Dogstar Theatre Company

By Hamish MacDonald
From an idea by Bruce MacGregor
Directed by Alison Peebles
Designer Ali Maclaurin
Musical Director  Jonny Hardie
Musicians Ingrid Henderson & Jonny Hardie
Performers Alyth McCormack & Matthew Zajac

“An engrossing treat…a fascinating and provocative piece of music theatre” Sue Wilson, The Scotsman

Tour News
JANUARY 2012
24th              7pm       North Edinburgh Arts Centre 0131 315 2151 (preview)
25th & 26th  8pm       Tron Theatre Glasgow Celtic Connections 0141 353 8000
                                   www.celticconnections.com                      
January 27th              Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh 0131 665 2240        
                                   www.bruntontheatre.co.uk

May 2012 Scottish Tour
The show will tour throughout Scotland in May.  The full tour schedule will follow soon, but  venues confirmed to date include:
Perth Rep Theatre
Eden Court Theatre Inverness
An Lanntair Stornoway
Traverse Theatre Edinburgh
Dundee Rep Theatre
Cumbernauld Theatre
Lochinver Village Hall
Woodend Barn Banchory
Eastgate Theatre Peebles
Druimfin, Tobermory
Cove Burgh Hall Helensburgh

This timeless tragi-comedy, "afloat on a sea of music",  was originally acclaimed as the hit of the 1999 Highland Festival. It later toured the Highlands to universal critical acclaim and was adapted into an international award-winning radio series for BBC Radio Scotland.

The story is set around a published collection of Highland music, the family inheritance of Captain Simon Fraser of Knockie. In the era of Sir Walter Scott and Waverley, when Highland Scotland was becoming viewed as the Romantic ideal of Europe, Captain Fraser attempts to win recognition and fame by publishing his Highland music. In order to gain the favour of elitist Regency society, Captain Fraser is compelled to remove the Gaelic verses, often of Jacobite and virulently anti-Royal sentiment, from his collection, to be presented as refined chamber pieces fit for the drawing room. Visiting Captain Fraser in old age, as he draws his final breath, he is visited by the ghosts and dreams dwelling within the pages of his collection, transported through the legends of the music itself and back through his own turbulent existence as composer, British Army captain, dispossessed laird and imprisoned bankrupt, through a story where ambition to succeed has been thwarted at every turn.

THe play is directed by the celebrated actress and director Alison Peebles, performed by the internationally recognised singer Alyth McCormack and Matthew Zajac (2009 CATS Best Actor) as Captain Fraser, with Fraser's haunting, vibrant music brought to life by Jonny Hardie on fiddle and Ingrid Henderson on harp and keyboards.   Jonny and designer Ali Maclaurin both worked on Dogstar's multi-award-winning international hit The Tailor of Inverness.  The triumphs and tribulations of Fraser’s  life are played out through a tapestry of moving and rousing tunes and songs that lie at the heart of traditional Gaelic and Scottish music. The music from the play was commissioned as a CD on the Greentrax label and was highly acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic.

“Beautifully written…it dwelt inside the psychological ruins, the haunted dreams of this compromised, complex tortured Highlander…Lyrical, elegiac, yet darkly resolute and lightened by both music and wit…” Tom Adair, The Scotsman

Hamish MacDonald and actress Irene Allan (The Seer 2006) spent a week at Dartington College, Devon in May, where they worked with Iranian artists Sasan Pirouz and Hassan Madjouni, developing ideas for a potential co-production between Dogstar and their company Leev Theatre, based in Tehran.  More details to follow.

THE TAILOR OF INVERNESS was presented in Dresden in May at SZENE:SCHOTTLAND, a festival of Scottish theatre produced by SOCIETAETSTHEATER, the city's central venue for new work.  We drove our van to the Newcastle-Amsterdam ferry and then on the autobahns across Germany.  Our German hosts gave us a warm welcome and wonderful hospitality.  We were doubly rewarded with yet another tremendous reception for the show, followed on the first night by a discussion with audience members led by the academic Stefan Schonfelder.  The discussion focussed on the issues of forced migration and identity which are central to the play and to the history of Dresden.  Once again we felt a very strong connection between the play and this part of the world, so close to the story's origin.  Dresden itself is still recovering from World War 2 in some ways:  its old town is only now nearing the completion of its reconstruction following the relentless carpet bombing of the city in 1945.

TRANSLATION & PUBLICATION
A German translation of The Tailor of Inverness by Jens Raschke will be published this year by PER H. LAUKE VERLAG OF HAMBURG, following our successful performances in Berlin, Kiel and Dresden.  The play has also been translated into Ukrainian by Svitlana Shilpchenko and into Polish by Wojciech Wozniak for supertitling.  The leading Ukrainian literary magazine VSESVIT published Svitlana's translation of the play to mark our visit there in autumn 2010.  Svitlana's translation was assisted  financially by the Literature Department of the Scottish Arts Council/Creative Scotland. 

Written by Kevin MacNeil
from the novel by Torgny Lindgren

CAST
Matthew Zajac
Lynne Verrall
Sean Hay



Directed by Matthew Zajac with Virginia Radcliffe
Set & Costumes by Peggy Jones
Music Composition & Sound by Jonny Hardie
Lighting Design by John Gordon


"...very moving...a strong and brave piece of work."  Ian Stephen in Northings

 "Bizarre, poignant and, on occasion, nauseating….Strong and consistent performances all round ensure that this engages and entertains."  Thom Dibdin, The Stage

 "Sweetness is a piece of skewed post-modern storytelling that revels in its own oddness..There’s something at the heart of such a wild piece of contemporary folklore that says something about the ruthlessness of creation itself." Neil Cooper, The Herald

"Intriguing and wryly amusing."  Joyce MacMillan, The Scotsman


“…a brilliant and idiosyncratic black comedy.”  The Herald on Kevin MacNeil’s The Stornoway Way“…Lindgren has joined the ranks of the greatest writers.”  La Croix

February
24 & 25    An Lanntair, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis         01851 703307*
26            Sabhal Mor Ostaig, Isle of Skye                 01471 844207  www.seall.co.uk
March 
3              Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh 7.30pm                  0131 665 2240*
4              North Edinburgh Arts Centre 7pm
0131 315 2151



8              Gairloch Hall    7.30pm                                01445 781783
10            Macphail Centre, Ullapool    7.30pm              01854 613336
11            Farr High School, Bettyhill 1.30pm                 01641 521217
12            Mill Theatre, Thurso  7.30pm                        01847 896508
17            Woodend Barn, Banchory    7.30pm              01330 825431*
18            Grassic Gibbon Centre, Arbuthnott 7.30pm    01561 361668*
19            Tower Mill, Heart of Hawick 7.30pm               01450 360688*
21            Raasay Community Hall 7.30pm                    01478 660345 www.raasay.com
22            Lochinver Village Hall 7.30pm                       01571 844104
23 & 24    Eden Court Theatre, Inverness 8pm              01463 234234 www.eden-court.co.uk
26            Lonach Hall, Strathdon 7.30pm                     01975 651779*

*www.thebooth.co.uk for online booking

Two brothers, Archie and Murdo, live in the Far North on opposite sides of a field.  One brother is shrivelling away, the other eating himself to death on macaroons dipped in jam. These misfit siblings haven't spoken for years, although they share a cat. Kate is snowed in with Archie after he puts her up for the night.  In the days that follow, Kate is drawn in to the tissue of lies and self-deception that keeps the brothers alive in a bond of mutual loathing, leading them to their fate with profound, funny and touching results. 

Sweetness unites two widely acclaimed contemporary talents: major Swedish author Torgny Lindgren and Kevin MacNeil, one of Britain's most exciting young writers.

Torgny Lindgren is widely regarded as a major contemporary European author.  His work has been dramatised for the stage many times in Scandinavia. In the UK, Theatre de Complicite adapted his story Light in 2000.

Kevin MacNeil has adapted Lindgren's blackly comic novel about life, death and sugar, transposing it from Northern Sweden to Northern Scotland. MacNeil's latest novel, A Method Actor's Guide to Jekyll & Hyde, is receiving extensive critical acclaim, as did his previous novel, The Stornoway Way.  Kevin's previous stage work include cult play The Callanish Stoned.  He is also an award-winning poet and dedicated cyclist. www.kevinmacneil.com

THE TAILOR OF INVERNESS company undertook an eventful and rewarding tour in Ukraine, Poland and Germany during October 2010.  We drove our van from Scotland across the Netherlands, Germany and Poland via the Newcastle to Amsterdam ferry.  The Schengen Agreement has removed all border controls through these countries.  However, we did encounter some serious difficulties at the Polish-Ukrainian border, where Ukrainian customs officials initially refused us entry as they suspected we might sell our equipment in Ukraine !  After numerous phone calls to our Ukrainian hosts, letters faxed through from them and from the British Embassy in Kyiv, and long hours in the border queues we were allowed into Ukraine.

Despite the disappointment of having to cancel our performance in Pidhaitsi due to the delay, our travails at the border were worth it.  At the impressive Zoloty Lev (Golden Lion) Festival in Lviv, we presented two sold-out performances in the beautiful Les Kurbas Theatre alongside companies from Hungary, Poland, Austria, the USA and Ukraine.  In the north-western city of Lutsk, our hosts at Volhynia University had worked very hard.  400 people attended our first performance in the city's plush concert hall, with our second performance taking place before an audience of students in the university's own theatre. We then drove 400km east to Kyiv, where our three performances at Kyiv-Mohyla University took place.  All seven of our Ukrainian performances were met with standing ovations.

Our passage out of Ukraine went more smoothly and we travelled to Lublin in Eastern Poland for its Konfrontacje Teatralne (Theatre Confrontations) Festival, one of Poland's most prominent theatre festivals.  Its Artistic Director is Janusz Oprynski, a founder-member of Teatr Provisorium, one of the leading experimental companies in Poland since the late 1960s.  Here, there were companies from Russia, USA and Poland.  Both our performances were sold out and very warmly received. We then travelled across Poland to Zielona Gora for a performance at the city's university.  We chose to go there as many of the Poles who were deported from the Tailor's birthplace, the village of Gnilowody, were resettled near Zielona Gora in 1945.  This performance was also sold out.

The story of The Tailor Inverness originates in Poland and Ukraine, so it was particularly appropriate for us to tour there.  It was also quite nerve-wracking to present a story which is essentially that of the Polish-Ukrainian experience during the Second World War to an audience which had undergone that experience.  But it is also the story of the Polish and Ukrainian diasporas in Scotland.  Our audiences in Poland and Ukraine certainly had a much stronger grasp of the history we are exploring in the play, but there are still not many examples of artistic interpretations of this history.  We are still gathering critical responses to the performances there, but the ones we have seen so far are extremely positive, describing audiences as "visibly moved" and the performance as "brilliantly played" and "completely relevant to today", so we seem to have done quite well !

The show then ran for 5 performances at the lovely English Theatre in Berlin, where word of mouth ensured sell-out shows and a great reception, the show having obvious resonance for a German audience too, of course.  One result of the Berlin shows is an invitation to a festival in Dresden which will take place in May 2011.

The Tailor of Inverness returned to Germany for a performance at the brilliant Thespis Festival in Kiel, following two performances at the Arches Theatre, Glasgow for the 2010 IETM Plenary.  Thespis is a monodrama (one-person play) festival organised by an enthusiastic and skilled group of theatre workers led by the indefatigable Jolanta Sutowicz.  The festival included work from Armenia, France/Chile, Cuba, Israel, Finland, Lithuania, Russia, Poland, Germany, and the USA.  Ours was the final performance of the festival, in Kiel's state-of-the-art Schauspielhaus.  We received what was possibly the longest curtain call ever for the show and afterwards, we were invited to take the production to Iran, Israel and Belarus !  We'll let you know if and when these invitations are realised.

The Tailor of Inverness has now been presented over 130 times.  This includes our second Edinburgh Fringe run in August, a third run at Eden Court Theatre, Inverness and two recent performances at the Glasgow Citizens Theatre.  We are currently beginning to set up a visit to the USA for early 2012 in response to an invitation from the University of Massachussetts.

READ MORE ABOUT THE TAILOR OF INVERNESS, INCLUDING REVIEWS AND AUDIENCE REACTION ON OUR PRODUCTIONS PAGE