Nine Lives of Burns

All eyes are fixed now on the opening of ‘The Nine Lives of Burns’ painting exhibition opening at the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum, Alloway, on Thursday 01 December. It will be launched by a performance of ‘A Life with Robert Burns’, which is my new show based on the inspiration for the paintings and linked with stories about my playing Burns around the world. The exhibition will run to January 25, 2012, when we will close it with a performance of A Burns Experience with Alicia Devine on song and a wonderful dinner to boot.

 It’s astonishing how many guises one can find to dress Robert Burns in. He is capable of any kind of artistic treatment, because at heart he is solid gold and indestructible. God bless him, he has seen me through ‘mony a weary fitt, sin auld lang syne’. This is but the latest milestone.

 As if to celebrate, I have compiled all my Burns scripts and material in one volume, entitled ‘Burnscripts’, which Luath Press of Edinburgh is publishing in December. Everything I’ve ever done on stage about the Bard is here between bound covers: the solo play, the musical with composer Geoff Davidson, the various readings and the plays for children, ‘The Boyhood of Burns’. My own lyric, ‘There Was a Man’, to the tune of ‘The Star o’ Robbie Burns’ is also added for good measure. What more could I ask?

The response to ‘The Sevenpenny Gate’ has been heart-warming. The hour-long podcast on Celtic Underground did the trick and the articles in The Sunday Mail and The Celtic Quick News haven’t done any harm either. Everyone tells me they’re buying it for someone else for Christmas. ‘Follow, follow, we will follow on!’