Maybole Experience

I’m delighted to report an enthralling Maybole experience. In one hard, hectic, happy week Co-director, James Gibson, and I took a group of primary and secondary school children from Maybole’s four schools through a group of playlets I had written on ‘The Boyhood of Burns’. This relied so much on the co-operation of so many people from Maybole over such a short time that it was amazing that it all came together as much as it did on the final day in the Town Hall for a special World Première matinee performance on a Saturday afternoon. The audience response was completely rewarding and I gather that feedback from the town itself has been extremely positive. I take great satisfaction from this particular satisfaction from this particular project, but the greater credit must go to the man who initiated, organised and introduced the whole thing on the day, local dignitary, Mr David Kiltie MBE.

The highlight for me, I must confess, was the rendering by the children of my new lyric to the old, hoary anthem ‘The Star o’ Rabbie Burns’, which they and the audience sang lustily at the end and made me very glad I’d bothered. I understand the lyric is going in to the Special Burns Chronicle intended for 2010, so the world will soon hear of what brave Maybole started.

Hardly had the applause for this died down before I was facing two classes of drama students in St Andrew’s Madras College at the request of their redoubtable Drama teacher, Roisin McGrath, who wanted me to talk to the students about yet another world premiére, that of ‘The Crucible’ at the Bristol Old Vic in 1955, in which I played Parrish. It took place in the UK because the McCarthy hearings prevented the play being given a platform in America, so an unexpected honour came my way early in my career. I always remember Arthur Miller’s advice to us at the reading was that he regarded himself merely as the architect of the piece. We, the actors, were the building bricks from which the ‘play’ house was made, into which the audience would be invited to share the dramatic experience.

I am currently engaged in writing two solo stage shows based on the lives and work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife, Margaret Macdonald. This is seen as a twin project, although either could easily exist as individual solo presentations. The inspiration for these have come firstly from Peter Trowles and the Mackintosh Heritage Group and secondly from Robin Crichton and his Mackintosh organisation in Roussillon in the South of France. So it will be a busy time writing until Christmas.