Theatre reviews: Oor Wee Mammie McGoose | It's a Wonderful Life | The Burns Project
This year’s Kirkcaldy panto is a heartwarming gem, writes Joyce McMillan, while Oran Mor rolls out a thought-provoking stage version of classic Christmas film It’s A Wonderful Life
The Burns Project, The Burns Birthplace Museum, Alloway ★★★★
If you fancy a riotous, heartwarming masterclass in the joys of traditional panto, then the show for you is Oor Wee Mammy McGoose, the latest glorious small pantomime at the cheekily-named Kirkcaldy King’s – in fact a wee 100 seat hall on the seafront, crammed with happy panto-goers.
This year’s Oor Wee Mammy McGoose – directed by Suzi Budd, and led by the superb team of writer and actor Mark McDonnell and world-class petite dame Billy Mack – tells a tale of resistance against an evil assault on the Links Market, a fixture in Kirkcaldy’s spring calendar for the last 700 years.
The secret of the Kirkcaldy King’s panto lies partly in its brilliant grasp of basic pantomime skills, from intense and hilarious audience interaction, to a story briskly told. The music – orchestrated by brilliant Stephen Roberts at the keyboard – is deftly chosen and strikingly well performed, including a bring-the-house-down version of Abba’s Gimme Gimme Gimme featuring Mammy McGoose as Agnetha.
Above all, though, this show understands that panto is a people’s art form, at its best when it is most proudly, passionately and rebelliously local; small wonder that Kirkcaldy audiences cheer it to the echo, and can’t wait to come back for more, next year.
For those who are all pantoed out, by contrast, Oran Mor rolls out a light-touch stage version of classic Christmas film It’s A Wonderful Life, written and directed by the great and tireless Morag Fullarton.
Slightly surprisingly – given the potential for updating and relocation – Fullarton’s It’s A Wonderful Life – Maybe plays the story almost straight, as the four-strong skeleton staff of a cinema with failed projection equipment decide to act out the famous movie themselves. There are some light-touch moments, of course, particularly from Kevin Lennon as our hero George’s Bailey’s father and uncle, guardian angel Clarence, and assorted Bedford Falls townspeople of all genders.
Chris Forbes, though, is a pretty serious George, less quirkily humorous even than original star James Stewart; and the result – with a few 1940s songs to power it along, courtesy of musical director Hilary Brooks – is a warmly entertaining but also faithful and thought-provoking version of this classic tale about basic human decency, and how an economic system which leaves no place for it eventually turns to nightmare.
Robert Burns would probably have liked George Bailey. An honest man, he said, is the noblest work of God; and this January brings a new short tour of the National Trust for Scotland’s immersive show The Burns Project, a beautifully-crafted one-hour dive into the deep contradictions and tensions that ran through the fabric of Burns’s short life.
Directed by Cora Bissett, and performed to a small audience gathered around a ghostly white dinner table riven by a zig-zag crack through which light pours in, the show is written and performed by James Clements as Burns, with composer and musician Lisa Rigby adding songs, narration, and a vital female perspective.
In a sense, there’s little here that we don’t already know, about Burns’s failures and infidelities, passions and struggles. It’s rare, though, to see such a complete version of the man presented so vividly, with such brilliant design (by Jenny Booth and Ellie Taylor), and such a perfect musical accompaniment; and captured in a performance that fully acknowledges Burns’s weaknesses, but also recognises and honours his huge creativity, and the massive, tireless work of writing and collecting he was driven to complete, before death came to claim him, far too soon.
Oor Wee Mammy McGoose at the King’s Theatre, Kirkcaldy, until 11 January. It’s A Wonderful Life – Maybe at Oran Mor, Glasgow until 28 December. The Burns Project at the Burns Birthplace Museum, Alloway 9 January; Culloden Battlefield, 12 January; Haddo House, Aberdeenshire, 14 January; and the Georgian House, Edinburgh, 17-25 January.
The Scotsman’s arts newsletter is now sent twice a week - subscribe today
Want the latest Scottish headlines sent directly to your phone? Sign up to our new WhatsApp channel here.
Comments
Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.