Previous Shows
Faith Healer
'The audience are propelled from emotion to emotion as each character reminisces' - Inverurie Advertiser
Frank is the faith healer, Grace his wife and Teddy, Franks promotional warm-up man. Together they conjure up a vagabond existence, bucketing round Scotland, Wales and Ireland in a van thaht doubles as a home and transport. They fetch up in draughty halls before an unforgiving audience. It's not that Frank's healing touch is bogus, just erratic, but....
In the hands of Friel, himself an Irish dramatic magus, faith healing becomes a metaphor fro artistic gifts, of how the muse inspires and sometimes destroys.
The three characters tell their stories directly to the audience, not to each other, leaving the public to decide who is telling the truth and finally, what happened on the last terrible evening of the tour in Donegal?
Written by Brian Friel
Opium Eater
1820 - Edinburgh. Thomas Dequincey, shivering in his dingy lodgings below a Grassmarket brothel, scribbles away desperate to meet a deadline which has already passed. Driven by demons from without and within, the writer is dependent on his companion, the simple-minded Willie, for the laudanum he craves
By turns electrifying, richly comic and deeply moving, this is an utterly compelling portrait of a bizarre and symbiotic relationship: the flawed English man of letters and his sly, far from dim-witted Scots servant.
DeQuincey's drug-fuelled delusions and hallucinatory visions - 'the miniature theatre of his mind' - are acted out by Willie with fervent, poignant skill.
Written and Directed by Andrew Dallmeyer
Double Lives - Lady Bracknell's Confinement/ Wendlebury Day
'A remarkably eloquent, witty entertainment' - The Stage
This dazzling double bill explores the themes of illusion and reality, deception and truth.
Wendlebury Day is a darkly humorous study of split personality featuring featuring the multi-faceted Finlay McLean as the eponymous Wendlebury
In Lady Bracknell's Confinement, Doust had created a pefect simulation of Oscar Wilde's epigrammatic wit in this wickedly ingenious take on the classic comedy starring John Shedden as Lady Bracknell
This is a delightful double bill of challenging one-man plays, contrasting yet complementary. A double dose of ripe humour and raw emotion in an entertainment of splendid virtuosity.
Directed by Rose McBain. Lady Bracknell's Confinement written by Paul Doust, Wendlebury Day by David Henry Wilson.
The Laird of Samoa
'Powerful, absorbing drama' - The Courier
This is an amusing account of the author's life and travels, his attachment to Edinburgh, relationship with his father, marriage to an American woman and his slowly developing illness. Often involved are one way interactions with invisible characters from the autors life
A one man performance by John Shedden
Written by John Cargill Thompson
Whisky Galore
'The perfect production of the classic' - Perth Advertiser
The famous 'radio' version of a classic comedy in which the canny islanders of Little Todday thwart officialdom and the dreaded Excise to spirit away the cargo from the wrecked SS Cabinet Minister - thousands of bottles of Uisge Beatha
Postmans Knock
'Wordplay hits the write spot' - The Edinburgh Evening News
Letters are facinating, especially other people's. Postmans Knock presents every kind of letter - in performance. From the hilarious to the wryly comic, from the famous to the infamous. There are classic exchanges between the great and good and countless gems from unknown correspondents.
Humour abounds as bills and begging letters are binned and brickbats are returned. The witty riposte and teh rejection slip become art forms.
A hugely enjoyable experience illustrating theh art of letter writing as performance.
Compiled and performed by John Shedden, Finlay McLean and Rose McBain