Wednesday, October 9

Tag: Jamie Marie Leary

Cyprus Avenue – Glasgow Pavilion
Scotland

Cyprus Avenue – Glasgow Pavilion

Eric’s greatest fear is losing his identity as an Ulster Unionist. The world has changed since his youth during the Troubles, but he can’t move on. When Eric (David Hayman) suffers a mental health crisis, this fear affects his whole family. Eric is convinced that his newborn granddaughter is, in fact, the former Sinn Fein leader, Gerry Adams. No, she doesn’t have a beard, but apart from that, she looks just like him. However, nobody else can see the resemblance. Eric holds some unpalatable views. His sectarian statements and language are shocking, bringing gasps of horror from the audience. Glaswegians are familiar with sectarianism. The play is also very funny. Every performance in this play was superb, and Hayman is extraordinary. This character says and does awful things, b...
Nae Expectations – Tron Theatre
Scotland

Nae Expectations – Tron Theatre

As the title suggests, this is a version of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, relocated North of the English border. Young Pip (Gavin Jon Wright) is now a young Scottish lad encountering Scottish versions of Magwitch (Gerry Mulgrew), Miss Havisham (Karen Dunbar) and, unexpectedly, judgemental cows, on a journey from the Scottish countryside to Glasgow. It's a journey of great, and sometimes nae, expectations as he meets and helps an escaped convict and a twisted lady & young girl in a decrepit house, three people who will have far-reaching, and often sinister, consequences in his ongoing journey for personal betterment. Director Andy Arnold, for whom this is the 40th and final directing turn at the Tron called this story "a wonderful mix of dry and caustic wit combined with ...