Beauty And The Beast, Sunshine On Leith, Cinderella (KG)

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JOYCE MCMILLAN on BEAUTY AND THE BEAST at Dundee Rep, SUNSHINE ON LEITH at the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, and CINDERELLA at the King’s Theatre, Glasgow, for Scotsman Review 12.12.08
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Beauty And The Beast  4 stars ****
Sunshine On Leith  4 stars ****
Cinderella  3 stars ***

THERE ARE PLENTY OF UPS and downs on this year’s Christmas trail around Scotland; but it can’t be any coincidence that two of the shining high points on the road come courtesy of Dundee Rep, which next year celebrates the tenth anniversary of Hamish Glen’s bold  decision to create a permanent ensemble company of actors.  The result, a decade on, is a company of performers – now under the direction of James Brining,  and often refreshed by guest stars and new apprentices – who know each other and their audience well enough to take richly rewarding chances on stage; and who, as a result, often seem to have more sense of passionate, confident theatricality in their collective little finger, than some other companies can muster in a whole cast.

The company’s 2008 Christmas show, Beauty And The Beast, is a  fine case in point.  Laurence Boswell’s 1996 version of the story – first seen at the Young Vic – is the kind of modern version of a familiar tale that can easily slide towards an arty, un-Christmassy self-absorption.  Revisiting the darkness and complexity of the original 18th century story, it retains a strong French accent, and sidesteps the traditional good-versus-evil caricatures of pantomime for something more like a modern children’s drama told in words, movement and song.  In the Beast’s castle, the little heroine therefore meets a whole range of characters whose moral position is far from simple, from the Beast himself to his strange servants, and the witch who guards him.

At Dundee, though, the company – brilliantly directed by Jemima Levick – simply take the story by the scruff off the neck, and turn it into a thrilling piece of theatre, full of jokes and spectacle and a real, passionate struggle with the elemental forces of love and desire that both bind Beauty and the Beast together, and drive them apart.  Alex Lownde’s open, initially bleak-looking set creates a space in which an astonishing range of images and effects become possible, from the squalor of the rural field-with-caravan in which Beauty’s quarrelsome family are forced to live after they lose their fortune, to the echoing mirrored halls of the Beast’s castle; there’s stunning music from Karen Mciver, superb lighting by Chris Davey, and some memorably funny and clever song-and-dance sequences.

The true key to the show’s success, though, lies in the sheer quality of the acting, not only from the lovely Gemma McElhinney as Beauty, and Alan Burgon as her Beast, but from a superb Irene Macdougall as the Witch, Robert Paterson as Dad, and Sally Reid and Emily Winter as Beauty’s “ugly sisters”.  By the end, the sheer solemn weight of the story, in this form, becomes slightly tiresome; but it’s a minor loss of energy, in a Christmas show of outstanding beauty and power.

And then – as if that were not enough – the rest of the Dundee Rep ensemble is on stage at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh, with a brilliantly uplifting revival of their much-loved 2007 Proclaimers tribute musical, Sunshine On Leith.  Scripted by Stephen Greenhorn, the man who invented River City, Sunshine On Leith is unashamed stage soap-opera, a good old-fashioned family saga about what happens to a working-class family from Leith when their son Davey – and his friend Ally – come back from military service in Afghanistan, and try to settle back into civvy street.  There are romances and breakups by the barrowload, marital rows, health crises, and big career decisions; and plenty of unashamed sentimentality, as the show wraps itself around the complex but fundamentally romantic stuff of the Proclaimers’ most famous songs.

What’s really remarkable about this show, though, is the rare and exhilarating chance it offers an Edinburgh audience to see a full scale, well-crafted professional musical  which deals directly with their own place and time, and their own people, in their own voice.  The choreography and staging – on an endlessly ingenious series of Edinburgh sets by Neil Warmington – are slick, funny and brilliant, the acting is passionate, the singing is fine.  And the show, in the end, has something important to say about the decisions working-class Scots have always faced, in the quest for a better future; decisions about whether to stay or to go, to stick it out or head west, that will come increasingly into the spotlight as the recession deepens, and next year’s huge Homecoming event takes shape.

If Sunshine On Leith has plenty to say about life in 21st century Scotland, then this year’s pantomime at the King’s in Glasgow is so utterly lacking in local or topical references that it feels oddly rootless, and lacking in heart.  On paper, this should have been the Scottish panto with everything: it boasts, among others, the inimitable Gerard Kelly as Buttons, the lovely Karen Dunbar as both Fairy Godmother and Wicked Stepmother, and the inimitably droll Andy Gray as Cinderella’s hard-up Dad.

In the end, though, director Tony Cownie just fails to bring this promising mixture to the boil.  Kelly remains astonishing in his rapport with the audience, and his exemplary handling of the song-sheet sequence.  And Karen Dunbar is lovely as the Fairy Godmother, singing with a will.  But when Gray and Kelly briefly come on stage together as her comic backing-group, we catch a brief glimpse of the combined theatrical energy that should have been the backbone, heart and soul of this show; if only the script had allowed it, or if anyone in the cast had been stand-up comedian enough to take the framework of what should be a classic panto, and inject some comic life straight into its heart.

Beauty and the Beast at Dundee Rep until 3 January.  Sunshine On Leith at Edinburgh Festival Theatre until 3 January, and at King’s Theatre, Glasgow, 10-21 February.  Cinderella at the King’s Theatre, Glasgow, until 11 January.

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