'Mark Thomas richly deserved the 2014 Freedom of Expression Award for Cuckooed. This should be compulsory viewing for everyone in the UK. The timely and very important issues include the erosion of our rights to privacy, and democratic activism without interference from the state, but ultimately it was about freedom of expression, which is the reason we created this award.'This review from The Guardian gives a good overview of the production.
Siobhan Reardon, Amnesty International's Scotland Programme Director"
"For years, Martin appeared to work tirelessly for Campaign Against Arms Trade. He was warm, funny and apparently loyal. He was a good friend, turning up at the police station after Thomas's first arrest for activism. He was so loved that he was asked to be godparent to one activist's child. But he was being paid to spy on the group by BAE Systems, Britain's largest arms manufacturer. Who could ever have imagined it? This was a man who put a custard pie in the face of the former BAE head honcho, Richard Evans. A spy wouldn't do that, would he?
Part of the power of this neatly crafted one-man show is the way it exposes how easily we believe and how hard it is to accept that we have been duped. How without trust everything breaks down: friendships, partnerships, even our relationship with the state. Particularly our relationship with the state, in fact. If it turns out they are spying on us, why should we ever trust anything they say?"
"While by no means explicitly anti-war, in the current climate one can't help but think of what happens when real-life monsters invade small and vulnerable countries. There too, it seems, it is the women who are left to tell the bloodiest of tales."And this review from the public reviews website captures the strip down quality of Heaneys translation which bring the words ,and not the fantastical images,of the original the centrepiece of the work and its connection to audiences of today.
"Alone, Seamus Heaney’s translation reads with an elegant fluency; paired with the Tron Theatre Company Beowulf leaps to life in a flourish of literary devices set against a darkened and brooding stage. The distinct voices of three of Scotland’s finest actresses collectively portray the iconic tale of a Danish community under siege by the god-cursed monster, Grendal. From across the sea comes the heroic Geat warrior Beowulf, determined to protect the Danes and the Heorot Hall built by their King, the sole location of refuge and solidarity in the midst of their devastated community."
"Nikki Kidd, Scotland’s midfielder, worked harder than anyone to keep them in the game. “We took the game to them and really performed excellently so we’re absolutely gutted not to be progressing to the semi-finals,” she said. “We threw everything at them and I think we had them rattled ... we’ve come such a long way in the past few years. And we took another step again today. We did ourselves proud.”The Scottish Hockey website also gives a reflection of the performance of the team from the low expectations prior to the tournament.
"Scotland Head Coach Gordon Shepherd added, “It was a fantastic performance, one I’m very proud of. I’m so proud of the players, I couldn’t have asked for any more from them.Its good to see even the Woman can join the Men in giving Scotland heroic defeats which are to be more savoured than a mere win.
“We prepared so well for this game, we had a game plan that very nearly came off. In the second half, I don’t know if I’ve seen them play with such conviction, they were amazing.
“We had the corners, we had the open play chances. We had six corners so no-one can say we didn’t create chances, but we just didn’t execute, that was the only thing."
"I belong to Glasgow, dear old Glasgow town, but, alas, there is something the matter with Glasgow that's going round and round. Glasgow does not readily admit its history in the way that other cities in the United Kingdom have done - Bristol, Liverpool, London. Other cities are holding major events to commemorate the abolition. What's happening in Glasgow? - in the Gallery of Modern Art, for instance, which was originally Cunninghame Mansion, built in 1778, the splendid townhouse of William Cunningham, a tobacco baron? Or in Buchanan Street, the great shopping street, named after Andrew Buchanan, another tobacco lord, or in Jamaica Street, Tobago Street, the Kingston Bridge?
At school, I was taught about the industrial revolution, but not about the slave trade which financed and powered it. I was taught about the suffragettes, but not about the women abolitionists who came before them, and who went on to become them. Jane Smeal set up the Glasgow Ladies Emancipation Society in the 1830s. And as early as 1792, 13,000 Glasgow residents put their name to a petition to abolish slavery. I never learnt, for instance, that the movement to end slavery in the British Empire in the 18th century is probably the first human rights campaign in history."
"The scene is a Glasgow care-home where Morgan lay dying, in the last year of his life; the key relationship is the one between Morgan and his friend and biographer, a fictional version of the real-life James McGonigal. Morgan feels he cannot write any more, but is suddenly assailed by three vivid and terrifying dreams. He clutches at James, and asks whether he thinks it possible that “a person could live two utterly different lives, without either self being aware of the other?”The video below is the "Off The Page" programme featuring Edwin Morgan discussing his childhood and what , for him , was a bad period for Western Poetry post-war.
Out of that central thought, Lochhead weaves a complex 80 minutes of memory, imagination, conversation, and poetry, in which Davie McKay plays both a lovable Morgan and – with less success – a cheeky, streetwise character who represents the poet’s “life force”. Part tribute to the intensity of a homosexual life that spanned the ages of secrecy and openness, part powerful reflection on Morgan’s modernity and restlessness, and part loving portrait of a city with its own double lives, Lochhead’s play is as rich as it is memorable; and even in its most awkward moments, the three actors – including Lewis Howden as the biographer, and Steven Duffy as a series of lovers – deliver it with a passion and care that speaks volumes, not least about the love that surrounds the immortal memory of Edwin Morgan."
