Magic Moments

by Niall Walker

Grant Smeaton as a saucy Cardinal (Cardinal Sinne @ Glasgay!)
Although Raymond Burke's script was either an extended skit or a pilot for a forthcoming BBC sit-com (and Sinne's helper Mrs Cavendish certainly had that overwrought widow vibe that would lend itself to playground popularity), it was Smeaton's ease as the titular cheeky cleric that gave Cardinal Sinne a period charm. The period was the 1970s, and Smeaton has a wry presence that Benny Hill would envy.

The Jackson Pollock Reveal (Colquhoun & McBryde @ Tron)
While John Byrne's script had many magic comedy moments, the tragic tale of the Scottish artists began to feel that an hour with those two drunks who catch the last 38 bus to Shawlands every weekend, but the sudden reveal of a Jackson Pollock canvas captured the excitement of Pollock's sudden appearance in the art world: the scale and ambition of his abstraction - as well as its clear imagery - dwarfs the haggling duo and lends context both to Pollock's success and their failure to move with the times. 

Jonathan Goddard climbs out of the window (Dracula @ Tramway)
Although Mark Bruce's vision seemed caught between ballet and visual theatre (long theoretical analysis to follow), it had plenty of magic moments. When Dracula dangles outside of his castle's window, falls to the ground and transforms from his sinister host into bloodthirsty monster mode, Bruce's choreography abandons the polite balletic technique to portray the anguish of the nightwalker. Hugging the tomb that maintains him, hurling himself across the stage and twisting across the dark Gothic scenery: Goddard is bestial, animalistic but retains a mysterious sensuality.

Hamlet as a family feud (The Drawer Boy @ Paisley Arts Centre)
Mull Theatre's fine, unpretentious production of the Canadian contemporary classic is a sensitive portrayal of how the arts can impact on real life (c), but when Miles, a slightly naive actor, explains the plot of Hamlet to the damaged Angus as if he lived the experiences of the psychotic prince, it is a wonderful moment that emphasises, for once, how Shakespeare's popularity rests not on his language but his ability to tell a good yarn. Since Michael Healey's script examines how theatre - a fiction -  can reflect the fictions of mundane life, this crucial scene opens the second act with a sly wink: it is as if Miles is deceitfully describing his own life, to mock Angus. However, James Mackenzie (Miles) and Alasdair McCrone (Angus) nail the intimate complicity between these two outsiders, and set up the mood for a second half of revelations and resolutions.

Andy Clark having a shave (Colquhoun & McBryde, Three Sisters both @ Tron)
Andy Arnold is pushing his luck to call two plays a season of John

Byrne plays, but the skill of Scotland's master author/artist is clear in the way he works the dour humour of Chekhov into a Scottish vernacular and revisits a lost history of art in his two-hander about Colquhoun and McBryde. But it is Andy Clark getting the magic moment this time. In Three Sisters, he is a bearded sailor, played with restraint and respect so that a potential philandering pratt becomes a noble, passionate romantic hero. By the time of Colquhoun & McBryde, he's got his beard off and his bohemian swagger on, making 'the straight man' in this comedy duo a thoughtful, if occasionally drunken, foil to Stephen Clyde's raging alcoholic life and soul of the party.