Theatre reviews: Matilda The Musical | The Legend of Davie McKenzie | The Bacchae | Medea
There’s some excellent entertainment on Scottish stages this spring, writes Joyce McMillan
The Bacchae, Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow ★★★★
Scottish theatre is firing on all cylinders this spring; but first, in this weekend’s whistle-stop tour of the excellence on offer, it’s time to welcome the Royal Shakespeare’s Company’s mighty Matilda The Musical, first seen at Stratford 16 years ago, and now at the Playhouse for the next two weeks. Based on Roald Dahl’s horrifying yet much-loved children’s story, Matilda tells a tale of terrible parental and educational cruelty that seems far distant from the real-life experience of most 21st century kids; yet still taps into a deep primal dread of what unchained adult power can do, in the wrong hands.
Despite the horror, though, Dennis Kelly’s book and Tim Minchin’s score combine with Peter Darling’s disturbingly brilliant choreography to create a show that fairly bursts with energy, intelligence, and even hope; and with Richard Hurst preposterously brilliant as evil headmistress Miss Trunchbull, and a superb team of young performers on stage, this 21st century legend of resistance marches on, to the cheers of the 3000-strong Playhouse audience.
At Oran Mor, meanwhile, the latest lunchtime play is also a legend; in this case The Legend of Davie McKenzie, a brief but vivid coming-of-age story by Stephen Christopher and Graeme Smith, the team behind recent hit show Dancing Shoes. Davie McKenzie and his pal Sean are poverty-stricken Edinburgh kids who meet over the garden fence as wee lads, and form a strong bond, as Sean becomes drawn in to Davy’s imaginary world of adventure based on his encyclopaedic knowledge (he says) of every film ever made.
As teenagers, Davie and Sean end up in prison together for drug offences; Davie – released first, and on his own – succumbs to a lethal overdose. The rest of the play revolves around our narrator Sean’s doomed efforts, from his prison cell, to give his pal the send-off he would have wanted; and with the support of a perfectly-pitched turn from Ruaraidh Murray in all supporting roles, Sean Connor and Afton Moran deliver two memorable performances as Davie and Sean, funny, poignant, and full of vitality, even in death.
And finally, it’s a pleasure, this weekend, to note the return of two terrific 21st century Scottish responses to the towering classics of ancient Greek drama. Ewan Downie’s The Bacchae for Company of Wolves, first seen on last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, is a ferociously intense 55 minutes of solo performance based on the tale of the return of the god Dionysus to Thebes. The writing is beautiful, the performance almost ecstatic in its force; in a show full of dark warning about human arrogance, in the face of the wild sensual and celebratory impulses Dionysus brings to our world.
Bard In The Botanics’ award-winning 2022 production of Medea is also an essay in intensity; and its spring tour will offer audiences across Scotland a chance to revel in Kathy McKean’s brilliant 21st version of Euripides’s mighty drama, which exposes the full, cataclysmic rage of a proud woman expected to tolerate the utter humiliation of being discarded for a younger partner by a man who still holds all the cards, in terms of social, political and economic power.
A surprisingly literal domestic touring set slightly robs the show of the mythical grandeur that echoed around it in the Kibble Palace. Nicole Cooper’s central performance, though, remains a fabulous portrait of love and fury driven to the limit; the story of a woman who finally judges that her only weapon, against outrageous injustice, is to destroy what is most precious to her on earth, and then to vanish, into thin air.
Matilda is at the Playhouse, Edinburgh, until 22 March, and the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 18 November until 4 December; The Legend of Davie Mackenzie is at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 10-14 March; The Bacchae is on tour until 29 May; Medea is on tour until 11 April.
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