Bravo, Bertie! Stage play of 44 Scotland Street set to be be Fringe hit

Published on Tuesday 7 June 2011 16:02

They started life in a ground-breaking story serialised in the pages of The Scotsman.

Now the colourful characters of 44 Scotland Street, who have inspired several best-selling books by writer Alexander McCall Smith, are set to be brought to the stage at the world's biggest arts festival.

One of the biggest Fringe promoters, C Venues, will be playing host to the first stage play based on the celebrated books, which is being adapted by two American writers and staged by an English producer.

However, McCall Smith, who started began the serial about the bohemian corner of the capital's New Town in The Scotsman in January 2004, is understood to have given his full blessing to the production, being billed as "an entertaining and poignant cavalcade of Edinburgh life".

When McCall Smith, previously best known as the creator of the The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, launched 44 Scotland Street it became the first story to be serialised in a daily newspaper.

Based on the inhabitants of a fictitious upmarket building in a real Edinburgh street, Fringe show The World According to Bertie, based on the series' fourth instalment of the same name, has yet to be cast, although its London-based producer hopes all the actors will be Scots.

The show revolves around the schoolboy character Bertie, his perfectionist mother Irene and other familiar characters including Domenica, Big Lou, Matthew and Angus.

Andy Jordan, a former BBC producer whose previous Fringe hits have included A Midsummer Night's Madness and Pythonesque, said: "The two writers, Lydia Bruce and Sandy Burns, last came over to the Fringe from America with a play, The Patriot Act, in 2008.

"When they were here they read 44 Scotland Street in The Scotsman and picked up a couple of the books and really fell in love with them.

They approached me to help adapt them for the stage and we've been working on the show for the last 18 months.

"We are obviously having to write the script so that it is suitable for anyone who has not read any of the books, but hopefully it will be familiar to the many people who know the books so well."

A spokesman for the show added: "Even if you read the original daily newspaper series and the subsequent successful novels based on the newspaper strip, you probably wouldn't get to know the characters as you will from this charming theatre production."Meanwhile The Scotsman can reveal one of the unlikely highlights of this year's Fringe - an all-action bout featuring world-class wrestlers and comedians facing off in the ring. The Pleasance line-up will also feature the Fringe debut of an Eastern European theatre group feted by the likes of Mick Jagger, Steven Spielberg, Jude Law and Kevin Spacey.

Comedians Brendon Burns and Andrew Maxwell will be taking part in the one-off show at the The Pleasance, which last year played host to the National Theatre of Scotland's hit play about boxing, Beautiful Burnout.

The underground Belarus Free Theatre group was founded in 2005 as a means of resisting government pressure and censorship and performances in their home country are normally held in secret locations, due to the risk of persecution.

Underbelly's line-up will feature - two actors performing The Lounge Room Confabulators in the living room of choice of a group who book tickets.

NEW TALES

IN THE fourth instalment of 44 Scotland Street, put-upon Bertie is still struggling to escape his overbearing mother's influence, his yoga lessons and his pink bedroom, while wondering why new baby brother Ulysses looks like his psychotherapist.

Insufferably handsome Bruce has returned from London to the arms of heiress Julia.

But all is not well among the residents: Angus's dog and constant companion Cyril is under threat of execution, victim of a miscarriage of justice, while pretty, indecisive Pat and hopeless romantic Matthew are on the verge of making a terrible mistake.