So, I’m sitting in the bar at The Tron theatre and some well kent faces are mulling around. These include Dave Anderson, Sandy Nelson, Alan Tall, David MacLennan and many more who I still think of as being involved with Wildcat, 7:84 and other independent theatre groups that I used to pay to see back in the day. Then it hit me. It’s May, it’s the Tron, it can only mean the return of Mayfesto, the agit-prop theatre festival that appeared last year to fill the gap that had been left unfilled since the sad demise of Mayfest. What’s on offer? Here we go:
Tonight is It’s A Dead Liberty which features all of the above as well as Alan Bissett (you’ll have heard of him: see Some Things Mean More Than Cars and Girls: An Inte…) and it promises a night of political commentary, rousing song and a lorra, lorra laughs.
Then there is The King of Scotland written by the always excellent and reliably filthy Iain Heggie which stars TV’s Jonathan Watson and which is bound to be a riot. Heggie is perhaps still best known for his play Wholly Healthy Glasgow which made it, controversially, to TV and starred the sadly missed Gerard Kelly. If you remember it you’ll know what to expect from this play.
There’s also a David Harrower play A Slow Air, Fishamble’s Forgotten, an adaptation of Flann O’Brien’s At-Swim-Two-Birds and, from Mephisto theatre company, Grenades, as well as Gary Owen’s Crazy Gary’s Mobile Disco which promises a wild night out.
But the highlight may be David Ireland’s Everything Between Us which is set in Northern Ireland’s Stormont Parliament Buildings on the first day of the newly formed Truth and Reconciliation Committee and is about the tensions between two sisters which comments upon Northern Ireland’s past, present and future. It’s sure to be an emotional play which will challenge the audiences beliefs and prejudices. Here’s a taster:
Mayfesto runs from Wednesday the 4th to the 28th of May and you can get all the information as well as tickets from www.tron.co.uk . If you haven’t been to the theatre in a while this is the perfect opportunity.