Theatre romp with Tam as new season unfolds

Jan 13 2009 by Alison Anderson, Perthshire Advertiser Tuesday

ROBERT Burns’ much-loved tale of Tam O’Shanter has been adapted into a fast and furious stage production which launches the 2009 season at Perth Theatre.

This is the only new professional theatre production celebrating Burns in his 250th anniversary year, and with big names on the Scottish theatre and music scene involved in Tam O’Shanter, it promises to be an exciting and fitting tribute to the Bard.

Award-winning playwright and director Gerry Mulgrew directs Tam O’Shanter, and Blairgowrie-born and raised actor Andy Clark takes the lead role.

Mulgrew’s Tam O’Shanter is a bawdy musical romp which, as well as retelling the tale of the much loved ‘drunken blellum’, explores the relationship between Tam and the long-suffering Kate, while recreating elements of the world in which Burns was writing during the 1790’s.

Material from other Burns works finds its way in to the production, which intertwines Mulgrew’s own Scottish verse with that of Burns: The Holy Fair and The Cottar’s Saturday Night allow Mulgrew to create scenes satirising religious fundamentalism and to give an insight into 18th Century Scots peasant life. Modern and local references are scattered throughout the work, drawing inevitable parallels between today’s Scotland and the country of Burns’ ken.

Mulgrew described his re-discovery of Burns’ work as he prepared for Tam O’Shanter: “I have recited this poem many times at Burns suppers and it’s a special delight to be let loose on a dramatisation of it for the stage.

“The project has served as a catalyst to make me go back to Burns and read as much of him as I can. It has been astonishing to rediscover his passion, his political astuteness, his hilarious and deadly accurate satirising, as well as his wonderful dexterity with language, both Scots and English.

“I hope I can do him justice in the choral romp I am devising for Perth.”

The production features a live music score by Aly MacRae, played by three musicians including Aly and Perth’s Brian MacAlpine.

Andy Clark is well-known to Tayside theatregoers, having been a member of Dundee Rep Ensemble. He returned to Dundee Rep in the autumn to play the evil Dr Dark to open the National Theatre of Scotland/Catherine Wheels’ touring production of Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Also among the 11-strong cast of Tam O’Shanter is Gerda Stevenson whose TV and film credits include Heartbeat, River City and Braveheart, and who appeared in Perth Theatre’s highly successful Yellow on the Broom.

Tam O’Shanter runs at Perth Theatre from Friday, January 30, until Saturday, February 14. For tickets, call the Horsecross Box Office on 01738 621 031 or visit www.horsecross.co.uk