Hitting an exciting stage

Published on Sunday 17 December 2006 00:38

AS reported last week, 2006 was the year of the National Theatre of Scotland.

Such a high hit rate owes much to the way the NTS operates, promoting talent that already exists in the theatre infrastructure. Roam, for example, was nurtured by Edinburgh's Grid Iron which, for many years, had dreamt of staging a show at an airport. The NTS made it possible, but the success of the performance, which took place in the check-in desks, baggage carousels and waiting lounges of Edinburgh International Airport, was a testament to the site-specific know-how developed over the past decade by Grid Iron in playgrounds, shops and underground chambers.

BEN HARRISON'S production varied from the silly to the serious - from bucket holidaymakers to refugees - but one of the things that made it so memorable was the location itself. The same was true for a number of shows in 2006 which made a lasting impression because of their sheer ambition.

Falling, for example, was an NTS-supported show created by Poorboy and performed to small audiences on the night-time streets of Glasgow. In other circumstances, you might dismiss the script for being rambling and elliptical, but who could forget a show in which actor Brian Ferguson led you through a pub, on to the underground, where angels mingled with the passengers, then into a chic modern office?

On a similar scale of intimacy, several companies experimented with the idea of theatre performed on headphones. Visible Fictions staged Robert Forrest's Prince Unleashed to a young audience wired for sound who were privy to the characters' thought processes as well as their spoken words. David Leddy developed a new form of walking tour by giving MP3 players to the audience in Glasgow's Botanics for the excellent Sussurus and the less cogent Reekie on the Edinburgh Fringe. Puppet Lab did the same in Ghost by Judith Adams, blurring the line between fact and fiction on the streets of Leith.

There were bold ideas indoors too. Stewart Laing created a voyeuristic viewing platform for Pamela Carter's Slope. It allowed us to stare down from above at the bathrooms where Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine did all the things such hedonists do in a bathroom. On the subject of bathrooms, the Arches celebrated 15 years as Glasgow's grooviest underground creative hub with Spend A Penny: eight monologues performed one-to-one in toilet cubicles. In a neat gag, it cost just 1p to see. The intense and disconcerting experience marked the welcome arrival of what one critic called "shite-specific theatre".

During the year, the Arches continued to use its warren of spaces in an imaginative way. Its promenade adaptation of Inferno split the critics, who found it a sensory delight or a ghost-train travesty, depending on where they stood on Dante's original. The company was also behind strong revivals of Davey Anderson's Snuff and Joyce Carol Oates' Tone Clusters as well as its pioneering work with young directors and the Arches Festival.

On a larger scale, the major companies all had their moments too. Dundee Rep, with its permanent ensemble of actors, scored highly with the family-friendly Monkey, an inclement Midsummer Night's Dream and an intense Sweet Bird Of Youth with impressive performances by Irene Macdougall and Alan Turkington.

At Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum, the highlight was the two-part Faust, Goethe's soul-selling epic in a major new translation by John Clifford, directed with theatrical boldness by Mark Thomson. Following swiftly after the first productions by the NTS, it was a timely reminder that you don't need to be national to be ambitious.

Unfortunately, next door at the Traverse, the most ambitious play came in for the most criticism. Set in a war-torn Middle East, Henry Adam's Petrol Jesus Nightmare #5 was a modern-day piece of agitprop, reliant on crude caricatures of capitalists and war-mongers. But it was also a laudable attempt to dramatise the forces of politics and religion that dominate our world. Even though it didn't hit the mark, it made every other play in the Traverse's year seem lightweight.

At the Tron in Glasgow, director Ali Curran left in mysterious circumstances before her influence on the programme had been fully felt. Her replacement is Gregory Thompson, who directed a Gorbals-set Romeo And Juliet at the Citizens after his award-winning success with Molly Sweeney at the end of 2005. Having hosted the NTS production of Mary Stuart with Siobhan Redmond, the Citz finished the year on a high note with the strongly acted Tom Fool and a politically attuned Shadow Of A Gunman.

David Greig produced two of the best children's shows in the joyously anarchic Gobbo for the NTS and the soul-searching teenage adventure of Yellow Moon for TAG. Other great children's shows included Is This A Dagger?, a lucid introduction to Macbeth by Wee Stories; The Lion Of Kabul, a brilliant insight into the rise of the Taliban by Nicola McCartney and Catherine Wheels; and Jason And The Argonauts, a funny and fluid Greek legend by Visible Fictions.

It was also the year we said sad farewells to Brian McMaster, who stood down after 15 years in charge of the Edinburgh International Festival; the 43-seat Mull Little Theatre where the lease ran out; and Clive Perry, the Lyceum and Pitlochry director who died in November. Down but not out were 7:84, Borderline and Theatre Babel which fell foul of the Scottish Arts Council but vowed to fight another day.