theatreSCOTLAND

Guardian 5 February 2014

Rough Island

By Nicola McCartney. A Play, a Pie and a Pint/Mull Theatre review

THE conversation about Live Aid usually focuses on the unprecedented gathering of the world's rock music elite and the profile-raising benefits for Queen and Status Quo. Or we talk about the concert's effects on charitable giving and the change it made in the attitudes of rich nations to poor ones. Such concerns don't pass playwright Nicola McCartney by, but she goes a step further, in this co-production between A Play, a Pie and a Pint and Mull theatre, by presenting that day in July 1985 as a pivotal moment in British social relations.

28 September 2011 Northings

Singing Far into the Night

By Hamish MacDonald. A Mull Theatre review.

THERE'S a fascinating article by playwright Hamish MacDonald in the programme for this Mull Theatre production. He writes about the experience of his father's friend, a Royal Navy rating, in 1931 when sailors of the Atlantic fleet went on strike. They were furious about a 25% pay cut brought about by the austerity programme of Ramsay MacDonald's government. Their action at Invergordon was tantamount to mutiny.

16 September 2010 Northings

The Weir

By Conor McPherson. A Mull Theatre review.

IT is fashionable among a certain generation of theatregoers to suggest there is something old-fashioned, even reactionary, about story-telling. Yet you only have to observe an audience for Conor McPherson's Olivier Award-winning play, The Weir, to see how helplessly we are transfixed by a gripping narrative. The playwright understands the human need for stories and, putting aside an appalling example of inappropriate sweet rustling on the front row of the Regal in the most poignant scene, Mull Theatre's production holds us spellbound.

30 March 2010 Northings

Laurel and Hardy

By Tom McGrath. A Mull Theatre review.

IF my house was on fire, the first thing I would grab is the Laurel and Hardy DVD box set. I suspect I am not alone in that to judge by the audience for Mull Theatre's revival of the late Tom McGrath's bitter-sweet tribute to Stan and Ollie. When one of the actors says wistfully, "Those were the days", someone near the stage lets out a yelp of approval.

19 June 2008 The Guardian

Swindle and Death

By Peter Arnott. Mull Theatre review.

PETER Arnott's satirical target is a good one. In Swindle and Death, the playwright contends that state subsidy of the arts, with all its requirements for civic accountability, has the effect of neutering the very work it seeks to support. Such is the hold of the bureaucrats that the only way for a theatre company to survive, he would argue, is to adopt the same dull, utilitarian values.

17 June 2008 Northings

Swindle and Death

By Peter Arnott. Mull Theatre review.

WOULD it be possible for a theatre company to scratch a living from touring the church halls and community centres of the Highlands and Islands without ever coming under the radar of the press or the Scottish Arts Council? Would it be able to stay invisible in this way for 300 years?

September 2005 Northings

Katie Morag

By Lisa Grindall. Mull Theatre review.

YOU'D expect a children's show produced by the bijou Mull Theatre to be a hand-knitted alternative to the Balamory juggernaut that is currently ploughing its way through the UK's biggest theatres. Indeed, the tour of ‘Katie Morag’ – the first ever stage adaptation of Mairi Hedderwick's island stories – is squeezing in to some of Scotland's smallest venues, from a primary school in Kyle to a village hall in Arisaig.

September 2003 Northings

Kidnapped

By Robert Louis Stephenson. Mull Theatre review.

THIS adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson thriller has come in for some criticism because of its design. And I'd agree with some other reviewers that Robin Peoples has devised one of those clever sets that are better in theory than in practice. It's a number of curved wooden boxes that fit inside each other and open up to form a whole variety of exteriors, interiors and landscapes. One minute it's a stately home, the next it's a ship at sea.

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