PITLOCHRY Festival Theatre (PFT) has been in the headlines in recent months, and – unusually for Scottish theatre in these days of austerity and uncertainty – the “theatre in the hills” has been generating good news stories.
Firstly, in July, it was announced that PFT’s acclaimed artistic director, Elizabeth Newman, had – after six years in Highland Perthshire – been appointed the next director of Sheffield Theatres.
Then, in September, came the stunning announcement that the great, Perthshire-born actor Alan Cumming would succeed Newman as artistic director at PFT (a post he will take up in January of next year). All of which has drawn considerable attention to Newman’s parting gift to Pitlochry – a production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s famous (and final) work, The Sound Of Music.
Newman has achieved a remarkable amount at PFT, both on-stage and off. Under her leadership the playhouse has gained a reputation for producing excellent and diverse work (often in fruitful, sometimes award-winning, co-production with other Scottish companies) in a year-round programme that has expanded well beyond its traditional summer season.
She also bequeaths to Cumming two new theatre spaces – namely, the fantastic PFT studio (to my mind, the best studio theatre currently operating in Scotland) and the lovely amphitheatre (set in the splendour of the playhouse’s Explorers Garden). Whatever fresh wonders the dynamic Cumming has in store for us, there’s no doubt that, in securing Newman’s services, South Yorkshire’s gain is most definitely Scotland’s loss.
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This fact is underlined by an impressive outing for the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic (which is, famously, based upon the true story of the Trapp Family Singers, who had to escape Austria following the annexation of their homeland by Nazi Germany in 1938).
The success or failure of a musical theatre production is often down to casting, and Newman has assembled a truly fine group of performers (including a number of actor-musicians) to deliver a songbook full of well-kent numbers.
In particular, it’s great to see such Scottish talents as Kirsty Findlay (Maria Rainer) and Ali Watt (former naval officer Captain Georg von Trapp) taking centre stage. Findlay has both the deftness of characterisation and the excellent singing voice required to play the part of Maria, the independent-spirited young Catholic who makes the journey from Bride of Christ to bride of von Trapp.
The talented actor once again takes on a big role and makes it absolutely her own. Whether it is the charming, gentle rebelliousness that makes her a poor fit for the convent or the refreshing vitality she brings as governess in the von Trapp household, Findlay plays the character with remarkable dexterity and seeming ease.
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Watt’s von Trapp captures the pain of bereavement that lies behind the widower’s militaristic stuffiness. Indeed, strong performances abound, from Kate Milner-Evans’s near-operatic rendering of the indulgent (and anti-Nazi) Mother Abbess to the splendid youngsters who play the von Trapp children.
Whilst Newman’s directorship of PFT has been an overwhelmingly good thing, I have occasionally worried about the stage designs of her productions. Set designer Ruari Murchison’s creation for this production is a case in point.
His set is dominated by a large stage revolve constructed of marble-effect stairs that sits beneath an unlovely, pixelated sky. It is, too often, cumbersome and insufficiently evocative of time and place.
However, this is not enough to spoil a production that impresses in every other department.
Until December 22: pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com
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