PRODUCTION REVIEWS
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1. Legend of St Julien 2. Tall Tales (in Paris) 3. Sacred Hearts 4. Place of the Pigs 5. Hunchback of Notre Dame 6. Cyrano de Bergerac 7. Arabian Nights 8. Carmen |
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| Press: Communicado Theatre Company’s
TROPICAL BARN DANCE is certainly out on its own – a manic marriage
of the celtic ceilidh and Hawaiian hula – hula. For its new show,
the company forgets the serious and the highbrow and launches into a
crazy cabaret – a breakneck tour through the world of dance, operetta
and drama. You soon get the idea when the performers press gang you
into joining in. With a production like THE TROPICAL BARN DANCE this
company cannot fail. The nine strong company offers a unique entertainment
that is not for the faint hearted but the flat footed are not excluded. Simon Warner, The Halifax Courier |
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THE
HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME 1985
| Press: ..its thrilling and dangerous
swings of mood between tragedy and farce are slimly held in place by
Steve Kettley’s clever, atmospheric music and Tam Dean Burn’s
powerful, authoritative performance as the lust-wracked Archdeacon Frollo.
The whole piece comes close to doing full justice to the emotional and
ideological weight of Hugo’s story Joyce McMillan, The Sunday Standard |
Press: This disconcerting, but
absorbing and brilliantly staged play will upset audiences who expect
clear cut styles and precisely differentiated categories. This is a
company with an approach to theatre that is entirely their own. They
copy from no one. The acting is of a uniformly high standard, and of
a style which fits perfectly with this unique form of theatre. Joseph Farrell, The Scotsman |
THE
HOUSE WITH THE GREEN SHUTTERS 1983
| Press: the remarkable duo of Pickavance
and Mulgrew….Like a kind of clowning Greek chorus, they played
Provost, Deacon, school bullies, drunken students, trombone, saxophone,
and every kind of low, broad and high comedy imaginable. As an ensemble,
Communicado were polished and professional, and if on their next visit
they choose to perform the Highlands and Islands Telephone Directory,
I, for one, will queue for tickets Andro Linklater, The Ullapool News |
Press: If anything, Mulgrew succeeded
in lightening and sharpening the novel’s social and psychological
perceptions, especially concerning its critique of commercialism……..
I feel that Brown himself would have appreciated and admired this production
Raymond Ross, The Scotsman |
| Press: Against the odds, Communicado has succeeded
in turning the tale of the dour and horrible Gourlay family into as
effective a piece of theatre as you could wish to see, full of colourful,
larger than life characters, ingeniously staged and choreographed for
a cast of six, and accompanied throughout by superb, jangly, original
music Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman |
Press: Barbie, Brown’s imaginary late nineteenth
century Scottish township, seethes into watchful, back-biting life with
such thrust and vigour, it is hard to accept that there are only six
actors in this new Scottish company…..No wonder the company has
been asked to extend their tour – they are at Glasgow’s
Tron tomorrow and Wednesday Mary Brennan, Glasgow Herald |
MARY
QUEEN OF SCOTS GOT HER HEAD CHOPPED OFF 1987
| Press: To the eldritch screech
of Anne Wood’s fiddle, director Gerry Mulgrew has constructed
a dark and eery version of the Queen’s history as seen through
the familiar figure of the crow, or corbie, here played chillingly and
convincingly by the excellent Myra McFadyen. With this production, Liz Lochhead has consolidated her position as one of our more entertaining dramatists, and Communicado has maintained its reputation as an innovative and daring company Glasgow Herald August 1987 |
Press: As a piece of theatre,
Mary Queen of Scots is hardly perfect yet…..in fact its most important
insights are concentrated into a devastating whirlwind of a ten minute
finale, which left the first night audience shaken, weak kneed, and
cheering themselves hoarse. But structural hiccups apart, its difficult to overstate the theatrical invention and bravado Gerry Mulgrew and his company bring to Lochhead’s script. Even more importantly, the combination has produced for Scotland a play that blasts Mary’s myths not out of mindless radicalism, but because it has something more important to say about her and about us, about womanhood and the nation Joyce McMillan The Guardian August 1987 |
TALES
FROM THE ARABIAN NIGHTS 1988
| Press: Ever since it (Communicado)
was formed under the imaginative direction of Gerry Mulgrew, the company, with hardly a hiccup, has stayed at the top of the class. The class is total theatre, where no action, image or event is beyond the reach of actors free in spirit and physique, and where writer and director are fused in wise and audacious imagination Brian Hayward - Times Educational Supplement March 1988 |
Press: ..it’s hard to say
who laughs the loudest, the old age pensioners in the back row, the
three year olds in the front, or the theatre critic in the middle. Its
part of the achievement of Mulgrew and this particularly experienced
and well chosen company that they create this cheerful, accessible atmosphere
without sacrificing the exotic beauty that underlies the imagery of
the tales. They also, even more remarkably, manage to celebrate and
enjoy their own rich theatrical ingenuity and athleticism in telling
these tales with a cast of six and the simplest of props. Joyce McMillan - The Guardian April 1988 |
| Press: Last year Communicado gave
us CYRANO DE BERGERAC and a torrent of verbal wit. This year the words
are few and the visual effects many. Isn’t it the sign of a genuinely
superior company – this restlessness, this dissatisfaction with
itself, this inability to stand still? The Times 1993 |
Press: The production has a rapt,
hypnotic quality that is hallucinogenic….. great washes of sound
that feature bells, whispered prayers, and marvellous passages of spacey
free jazz…..you emerge from this glorious show feeling that you
have experiences a benign and revelatory trip. The Daily Telegraph 1993 |
| Press: It is as if the allegory of a stained glass
window or great Gobelins tapestry comes to life. I found it totally
absorbing, cathartic, and as mysteriously moving as the ancient miracles,
played with passion and dedication Scotland on Sunday 1993 |
| Press: There are hundreds of good
things in Communicado’s light –hearted, serious minded extravaganza Scotland on Sunday |
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| Press: I have lingered in the
splendid new Traverse, not without reward. Easily the highlight has
been Gerry Mulgrew’s revival of THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD
for his Communicado outfit. Synge’s imaginative world of superstition
and remoter ritual is powerfully elevated above the usual rural realism The Observer 1994 |
Press: The acting by the Communicado
company is outstanding, and even the device of having young actresses
playing old men works surprisingly well. It is a real joy to discover
a classic coming up as fresh as paint like this The Daily Telegraph 1994 |
| Press: Gerry Mulgrew’s new
Communicado production of THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD is vivid,
lively rich in folkloristic song and detail, but its greatest insight
is that Christy Mahon becomes a sexual magnet not just because he has
supposedly committed parricide, but because he has a wild way with words The Guardian 1994 |
| Press: First there is the fun
of getting seated. The audience enters a wood, treads through a thick
carpet of bark and cones and hunkers down on logs and stumps. On your
face you will feel the rains of a storm that invades the forest. You
will feel the panicked reverberations of the deer hunt, the shock of
gunfire. Your neck will stretch as you watch trees scaled. You will
taste the fear. You will smell the evil. You will share the agony and
the repentance. The Glasgow Herald 1991 |
Press: …..depite the temptation
to reduce a big, difficult story about evil to a slight easy piece about
class, the sheer size and grandeur of the story keeps surging to the
surface, through the pure magic of the set, the dark subtlety and strained
organ notes of David McGregor’s sound, the fearless stylised choreography
of the deer-hunt and of Duror’s terrible dreams, the immaculate
and moving performances of Tam Dean Burn, of Laurie Ventry as the careworn
Neil, and, above all, of Kenneth Glenaan as Calum. The Guardian 1991 |
THE
CREATURE FROM THE MERMAID’S PURSE
| Press: Communicado perpetuates
its tradition of community involvement – King Dolphin’s
group of Wise Ones, who process on to the stage in a priceless selection
of evening frocks, swimming goggles and food wrappers whenever the going
gets tough, are venerable indeed: all members of the over 55’s
drama group Autumn Players. Super Gran has nothing on this bunch. Turtle
count: Nil Cross Dressing: Loads The List 1990 |
Press: It has colour, transformation
scenes, monsters, gunge, an environmentally sensitive theme, and a dedicated
team shoving it like mad. Scotland on Sunday |
| Press: Communicado comes bursting
onstage, all physical bravado and humorous derring do. The production,
raw and raucous though it may be, still makes us aware of what has too
often been missing from the play: inventiveness, energy, immediacy.
In short: life. The Times 1992 |
Press: The highlight of the Fringe
is Communicado’s CYRANO DE BERGERAC: an athletic, superbly organised
and infectiously entertaining account of one of the greatest romantic
brouhahas in all literature.The whole thing is a splendid piece of swashbuckling
– indeed I haven’t seen a swash so eloquently buckled in
years. The Sunday Times 1992 |
| Press: This is THE play of the
Edinburgh Fringe, probably the play of the year in Britain, even further
afield. Communicado – when they thrust their heart and soul into
a show, as they did with Jock Tamson’s Bairns, and as they have
done here – are in a class of their own. The Stage 1992 |
| Press: Another Fringe defector
(to the International Festival) is Gerry Mulgrew’s Communicado,
whose new version of Buchner’s DANTON’S DEATH at the St.
Brides’s Centre is tight, muscular, beautifully staged and lit.
The heroes really are the people, which is not what the play is about;
the ecstatic plebs are encased in rooms and cabinets like those grimy
iconographic shipyard workers and football supporters in the neo-expressionist
paintings of the new Glasgow School. The music of Karen Wimhurst is
outstanding, superbly perfomed. The Observer 1990 |
Press: The production…..is
another Communicado success combining fine atmospheric music and song,
a striking set and polished ensemble performances from a strong cast Edinburgh Evening News 1990 |
| Press: Nothing that they do at
St. Bride’s Centre diminishes their standing in my eyes as our
most exciting theatrical ensemble. They’re the nearest thing we’ve
ever had to those multi-disciplined East European troupes who can make
stage magic out of nothing. Mulgrew’s direction is as dramatically
inventive as ever, bubbling and erupting, simmering into deep silence
then boiling over, cleverly improvising, constantly surprising. Scotland on Sunday 1990 |
| Press: Some wonderful effects
are achieved by mixing Burn’s poems with Liz Lochhead’s
new grainy dialogue; and by knitting dance interludes into more forceful
company manoeuvres around, and indeed beneath, the long table of toasts
and celebration. This tremendous chronicle of mock-patriotic lamentation,
a tale of Glaswegian Everyman with a Faustian tinge, does honour to
a great new venue and confirms the five year ascendancy of Communicado. The Observer 1990 |
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| Press: Some of the staging ideas
are dazzling, others look a little fringey and tired. But for visual
and musical inventiveness, sheer seriousness of purpose, and a rare
combination of the spectacular and the morally disturbing, this is a
show magnificently worth seeing. It’s an event rooted deep in
the truth – if you’ve ever doubted it, while watching the
displaced and the dying on television – that, next time, it could
be you THE SCOTSMAN April 2002 |
Press: It’s at its best
when Mulgrew plays to his great strength – a movement –
based theatre of great simplicity and eloquence. He saves his best for
the final sequence, a searing reminder of vintage Communicado at its
best SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY April 2002 |
| Press: The overall effect may
be more of a pageant than a drama, but at times it is extraordinarily
powerful. This is Mulgrew’s first show for a number of years….we
have missed his brand of visually thrilling theatre. Welcome back. THE TIMES April 2002 |
| Press: Brilliantly resonant, often
paradoxical, non-judgemental, and political, the patriarchal hierarchy
is shown as the real ‘monster’, not the accused…this
terrific ensemble piece is a wonderful, multi-layered portrayal of female
identity THE LIST August 1996 |
Press: As one of the lawyers says,
“ a set of acts can be interpreted in any way you like”,
and the play, a more psychologically interesting FATAL ATTRACTION, is
a fragmented examination of a difficult truth. For all the fluidity
of Mulgrew’s direction – somewhere between Bertolt Brecht
and Hill Street Blues- this is ultimately a cerebral piece, and none
the worse for it THE HERALD August 1996 |
TALL
TALES FOR SMALL PEOPLE 1995
| Press: There is a dearth of good
children’s theatre in Scotland, but here is the best of stuff.
Tall Tales employs Communicado’s energetic flair, originality
and distinctive talent in this neglected area. This magical, entrancing
medley has many moments of thrilling but simple brilliance. There are
moments of breathtaking genius (as) when the hunchback is dying of a
broken heart for love of the swan……The world should see
this show, whatever its age! THE GUARDIAN May 1995 |
Press: Using every available inch
of the stage and simple but highly effective props, the six strong cast
manages to conjure up a magical world of spells and talking animals
through a series of stories whose dark overtones will, it must be said,
challenge younger children. THE LIST May 1995 |
| Press: Myself, I though the first
tale….too dark and adult a starting point for a children;s show,
but the other two tales seemed well nigh perfect for an audience of
lively seven to eleven year olds beginning to grapple with the darker
side of life, and to enjoy all the pleasures of rhyme and word play,
fully exploited in Mulgrew’s cheeky, rollicking Scots couplets. SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY May 1995 |
| Press: …aided by a quirky
live soundtrack and a set that seems to have a life of its own, (Mulgrew)
drags us unsuspectingly towards that intoxicating first breath of freedom
in a production that is punchy, robust, and insinuating THE GUARDIAN December 1994 |
Press: Director Kenny Glenaan
contrasts lengthy brooding reflections on the self-imposed imprisonment
with stylised raucous interludes…..Ross’s perfect comic
timing undercutting his most melodramatic moments….Even while
dirty, naked, and presenting a ludicrous red- buttocked figure, Mulgrew
endows the cowardly character with a dignity which is fulfilled in the
final scene…..Intellectually intriguing and outrageously entertaining. THE HERALD December 1994 |
| Press: Glenaan and his actors,
Gerry Mulgrew and Ann-Louise Ross, have made something special happen.
The result is a profound and ferocious synthesis of big personal-political
ideas delivered with great flair and human warmth THE SCOTSMAN December 1994 |
| Press: Kohout’s absurdist
strategies are light, economical and witty, and the excellent Communicado
company, directed by Gerry Mulgrew, enter into them with relish. THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH August 1998 |
Press: Helen Lomax is excellent
as the tough young termagant bride, bargaining with peasant cunning
over the spoils, but it is in the well drilled ensemble, typical of
Communicado, that the acting honours lie, the discipline never flagging
to the end, when a darker feel invades the comedy. THE STAGE August 1998 |
| Press: Much of Communicado’s
reputation rests on their emphasis on physical and visual theatre, and
when this aspect is given full rein, as in the murder scene, the results
are stunning. Paterson’s adaptation is a sleek creature, moving
from scene to scene with ease, and tightening the atmosphere around
the characters as the story darkens. THE SCOTSMAN March 1992 |
Press: Their playing of the murder
scene when Therese’s lover drowns her husband, the ironic scene
where the murderers are persuaded to marry, and the final petit guignol
scene of joint suicide in the presence of the victim’s paralysed
mother were highlights of the production. THE SUNDAY TIMES March 1992 |
| Press: The ghosts are whimsical
rather than scary, and the ensemble, selfless playing of a company who
have been welded into one unit is a marvel. “Bah, humbug”
to anyone who does not regard this as another triumph for Communicado THE SCOTSMAN December 1997 |
Press: In true Communicado style,
its an actor centred production, fluid, witty and unbound by too many
props. Ralph Riach’s Scrooge is endearingly blinkered more than
outright wicked, heading up a warm-hearted cast who perform Karen McIver’s
gorgeous a cappella carol arrangements on Simon Banham’s amusingly
outsized set THE SUNDAY TIMES |
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| Press: Our sense of THE SUICIDE
as an astonishing and extremely interesting play is greatly enhanced
by what is a superb Communicado production. The acting, like the sets
and the music, is of the excellent standard people have come to expect
from one of Scotland’s best touring companies THE SOCIALIST REVIEW September 1997 |
Press: Gerry Mulgrew directs with
a keen eye for clarity and pace, which ensures that the mayhem is rooted
in truth. This allows Erdman’s ideas to emerge with a wonderfully
light touch. The good news is that after Edinburgh this excellent production
will tour the country. For sheer unabashed entertainment look no further.
This is less of a farce, more a theatrical feast. THE INDEPENDENT August 1997 |
| Press: I doubt if anything in
Edinburgh this year will match Erdman and his current director, Gerry
Mulgrew, for quirky inventiveness THE TIMES August 1997 |
| Press: Communicado filter as much
light as possible into a very dark tale without losing any of its potency.
It is less exuberant than some of their previous productions, but has
the same tightly choreographed feel and brilliant visual sense, while
making the most of the play’s bareness. THE INDEPENDENT June 1989 |
Press: Enacted in front of a timber
triptych, the new translation by Maureen Lawrence is strongly delivered
by Gerry Mulgrew and Patricia Ross in the title role….it is not
often that any company is bold enough to tackle drama of this magnitude
and take it on tour THE SCOTSMAN June 1989 |
