Jackie Kay

Lyceum Christmas Tales

17/12/20

Lyceum Online

God, how we’ve missed The Lyceum! We’ve seen so many wonderful productions here over the years and it really doesn’t help that we live just around the corner, and so see it standing forlorn and empty on an almost daily basis. The production team for Christmas Tales had hoped to be able to admit socially distanced audiences to these live performances, had even gone to the lengths of adapting the stage to accommodate them, but it was not to be. So, in the end, Christmas Tales is a streaming-only affair.

Designed as a kind of family-friendly advent calendar, eight short plays are available to watch for free on the Lyceum’s website – and this pay-for-view special features four longer tales, streamed live direct from the theatre’s stage. The pieces vary in tone and are linked by some truly spellbinding folk tunes. We are treated to The Christmas Ghost by Louise Ironside, the story of a young boy (Ryan Hunter) discovering an unexpected presence in his house. Jackie Kay’s Christmas with Angela Davis is the evocative memoir of a young Glaswegian girl (Helen Katamba) falling under the spell of the imprisoned activist after seeing her face on that famous poster.

There’s an interval at the midway point (though of course, we miss the chattering crowd in the bar) and then we’re back for the second half.

The Returning of the Light by Lynda Radley is the stirring saga of a young girl (Kirsty Findlay)’s quest to bring the sunlight back to her winter-ravaged village. Finally, my favourite of the quartet, A Cold Snap by Shona Reppe is the story of Carole (Irene Allan), a contemporary suburban Scrooge, who finds herself forced to ‘celebrate’ the festive season by a mischievous Norwegian sprite.

There’s a genuine air of magic throughout the show, with the cast utilising the full depth of the Lyceum’s extended stage to great effect. A Cold Snap in particular uses the format of film to canny effect, with ever more elaborate festive decorations seeming to appear out of nowhere.

Afterwards, we head out for our nightly walk around the empty city and, quite by chance, bump into Ryan Hunter, on his way back to his lodgings, guitar across his back. We’re able to congratulate him, which is, I suppose, the closest that any of the cast of this charming show can hope to get to the hearty round of applause they deserve.

But this is 2020 and we must be realistic. Until we can safely return to the theatre, shows like this serve as a timely reminder of how truly enchanting the theatre can be – and of how profoundly we are missing it.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

Takeaway

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08/08/15

Kes Theatre Company, The Spaces On The Mile, Edinburgh

The streets of the East End are under threat from a dreadful new scourge… that most devious and all-encompassing of drugs… onions! And now the kids are hanging around outside a local takeaway and consuming them voraciously with little thought for the consequences. But what’s to be done about the problem? This sparky allegory by Jackie Kay, cleverly substitutes illegal drugs for something completely innocuous and manages to both expose the harm that drugs do and the over-reaction that society exhibits when dealing with them.

This is a school production, but it’s a damned good one – and at times the cramped performance space seems to literally strain at the seams to contain the sheer energy and enthusiasm of the ensemble cast. There were thirteen of them out there and as the piece incorporates quite a bit of physical theatre, they did well simply to avoid bumping repeatedly into each other; let alone moving with such evident control and precision. All the performances were exemplary and there were one or two potential stars of the future strutting their stuff in the midst of it.

If there’s a problem with Takeaway, it’s in the final section of the play, where Kay, having nailed her main subject with aplomb then segues into a riff on The Pied Piper of Hamelin – it’s almost as though she realised she needed to add an extra twenty minutes running time and looked around for a suitable fairy tale to tack on the end. Don’t get me wrong, it’s as nicely written as what’s gone before but doesn’t seem to sit comfortably with the rest of the script. But that’s hardly Kes Theatre’s fault. These gutsy young actors, from years 11 to 13 and based in Bath, have come to the Edinburgh Festival to compete with the professionals and have given a really good account of themselves. They should feel justifiably proud.

3. 6 stars

Philip Caveney