Good Women

It seems pretty clear that the traditional actor's complaint that "there are no good parts for women" has become untrue in Scotland. Recent months have seen The Guid Sisters - The NTS making good on the promise of their earlier all-female special, The House of Bernarda Alba - She-Town up in Dundee and Alison Peeble's searing My Shrinking Life. There was even a one woman special at The Oran Mor, The Great Disappointment of Santa Muerta, written and performed by the always imaginative Amanda Monfrooe.

Although The Guid Sisters was originally written in a French Canadian dialect, it has become something of a Scots classic: the translation went straight into Scots and, despite having some awkward edges - it's never clear why a bunch of Scottish ladies would have fancy French names or be so horrified by the thought of a club where people like to drink - picks up on the same cheeky energy of that genuinely home-spun classic, The Steamie. Praised for its representation of working class life, and respect for the strong female characters, The Guid Sisters acts as handy showcase for the wealth of wonderful Caledonia female actors.

My Shrinking Life is a deeply personal piece that sees Peebles grapple with the consequences of MS: unlike The Guid Sisters, it emphasises a stunning central performance (Peebles is brilliantly cynical, and even throws down a few of those Chekov and Shakespeare lines, just to prove she can). It's the same in Santa Muerta: the power of the actor defines the impact of the work. The Guid Sisters had a few star turns - that one out of Chewing The Fat - but was mostly all about the ensemble. In fact, it would be unfair to pick out one or two names as exceptional when the play is predicated on each character being revealed through their interactions with the others.

At this point, I probably ought to make some ridiculous statement about how things have gone too far the other way, and that men aren't getting their share. As it goes, there are still more male authors and directors knocking about, and equality is probably still a distance away. Instead, I'll make another sly dig at those directors who pick Shakespeare - if there was less Shakespeare on stage, they'd be more good roles for women - and vaguely wonder whether the very idea of talking about "male" and "female" theatre is even relevant.

Santa Muerta and My Shrinking Life are both very personal works, but the issues they raise are not insular. They share a preoccupation with death - one's concerned with the denial of it, the other with its inevitability - and range across various emotions that are not necessarily limited to the artist's life.

Get on the Guid Foot

I'll admit that I was confused by the press release for The Guid Sisters. Vicky Featherstone, artistic director of the National Theatre of Scotland, called it "not only a Scots classic but it is also a timely portrayal of women and economic survival." Then director Serge Denoncourt added "Forty years ago, in Quebec, everybody was talking about a new play: Les Belles-soeurs by Michel Tremblay." I had to go straight to Wikipedia and find out how a Scots classic could begin life as a French Canadian revolutionary drama.

Tremblay's original shook the conservative theatre of 1960s Canada, and was written in local dialect. His plays, which often feature that rare phenomenon, good parts for women, reflect his belief in the matriarchal nature of Quebecois society and he has been an outspoken, if awkward, advocate for Quebec's independence from English speaking Canada.

Given the tradition of Scottish plays that emphasise the power of women (The Steamie, She Town), and the political arguments about Scottish national identity, the translation into Scots, by Bill Findlay and Martin Bowman, was probably inevitable. 

The NTS/Lyceum co-production has managed not only to find a cast of fifteen women, including Karen Dunbar, but has enlisted the author's director of choice in Serge Denoncourt. Denoncourt is perhaps most famous for his production with Cirque du Soleil, but says that "Les Belles-soeurs became a fetish play, a lucky charm for me," following his first stab, at about ten years old, when he learnt it by heart and performed it in the street for his mates.

Denoncourt was mostly recently in Scotland working on Ana for Stella Quines - visually ravishing, this time-travelling epic attempted to compare the status of women in different eras: the presence of Karen Dunbar, best known for Chewin' The Fat, suggests that this production might be bigger on the laughs. And although the plot revolves around a grand prize of Green Shield Stamps (something else that probably needs to be checked on Wikipedia), the meat of The Guid Sisters is in the banter and conflicts between the large group of women.

Despite its origins in Quebec, it does fall nicely into the tradition of The Steamie - it's set in Glasgow, it's working class, it's about financial hardship, it has plenty of humour and community.

Lyceum, Edinburgh

21 September – 13 October 2012

Kings Theatre, Glasgow                                                                 

Tuesday 23 – Sat 27 October