Curtain rises on 40 years of theatrical gems in Edinburgh exhibition

Published on Friday 18 December 2009 22:10

ARTIST and playwright John Byrne revisited one of his most famous set designs at the National Library of Scotland yesterday.

&#149 John Byrne with his celebrated 'pop-up book' set, which forms part of the new exhibition celebrating modern Scottish theatre at the National Library

The "pop-up book" stage, designed for the 1973 touring production of John McGrath's play The Cheviot, The Stag and the Black, Black Oil, forms the centrepiece of a new exhibition, Curtain Up: 40 Years of Scottish Theatre.

Exhibits include the original handwritten script of Tony Roper's The Steamie, the gold costume worn by Alan Cumming in The Bacchae and a battered pair of army boots from the National Theatre of Scotland's international hit Black Watch.

Byrne, who is married to the Hollywood actress Tilda Swinton, said he was pleased to see the pop-up book, which he made for the 7:84 theatre company and has been restored for the exhibition.

"I haven't seen it for a long time," he said. "The idea was that each scene you could pull a page over."

The set, which folds like a book, has five different scenes and was designed to be transported, wrapped in tarpaulin, on the top of a transit van.

Byrne said that he had great memories of the groundbreaking 7:84 production, which toured village halls in the Highlands and Islands and was intended both to entertain and to stir up political unrest.

He said: "It was so alive and so brilliant, so on the button – it really was. It was about the modern history of Scotland. It was very very political popular theatre."

The archives of 7.84, which derived its name from the notion that 7 per cent of the population owned 84 per cent of the wealth, are kept by the National Library of Scotland.

Byrne said he believed Black Watch by Gregory Burke was the real successor to the radical theatre tradition of the Seventies.

"Nobody can sit down at the end of that show. There's a standing ovation at the end of every show," he said.

He said there were a lot of good young writers in Scotland, but there was a tendency for people to want to work in films, "but that is like chalk and cheese, it has got nothing to do with it".

Despite having written the hit television series Tutti Frutti, Byrne said he now had no TV – saying it had become the "poor relation" of the arts.

"The Americans dominate TV drama now – you have The Sopranos and The Wire, which is such as shame because there are some great writers in this country," he said. "I don't have a television. It is just passive entertainment. I have no truck with it. Theatre gives you a real rush that you would never get from television."

The playwright said he was working on an adaptation of The Cherry Orchard set in Braemar, to be shown at the Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh next year.

He said of the exhibition devoted to modern Scottish theatre: "I am very pleased to see it celebrated – it is a vital part of culture."

Curtain up on four decades: what you can see

1. The handwritten script from Tony Roper's play The Steamie.

Roper's work, which celebrates the lives of working class Glasgow women, was rejected by companies across Scotland until it fell into the hands of comedienne and actress Elaine C Smith, who saw its potential.

The Steamie went on to become a huge hit for Wildcat in 1987 and has become a hugely popular and much performed modern classic.

Roper said: "It is an honour to have my wee jotter containing the first play I ever attempted on display at the National Library. Thank you to all the performers and audiences who have made it such a magical event in my life."

2. He may have wanted to be Doctor Who from the age of three but David Tennant's first acting role was in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, a comedy about totalitarianism performed by radical theatre company 7:84. Curtain Up: 40 Years of Scottish Theatre features a still from Scotland Matters that shows a very fresh faced Tennant in another of his very early roles.

3. Broadway baby Alan Cumming made a triumphant return to the Scottish stage for the 2007 National Theatre of Scotland performance of The Bacchae, adapted by David Greig. The exhibition at the National Library includes the shiny costume he wore for his role as Dionyus – the god of excess. In the stunning opening scene Cumming was lowered on to the stage dressed from head to toe in dazzling gold.

4. Siobhan Redmond took to the stage as Queen Elizabeth in the National Theatre of Scotland's 2006 production of Mary Stuart wearing a shimmering gold dress embroidered with jewels and pearls. The play was a new version of Friedrich Schiller's drama, which was written by David Harrower. It ran at the Lyceum in Edinburgh and the Citizen's Theatre Glasgow.