Arts diary: The show must go on play based on chance meeting with James McAvoy

At Play, Pie and a Pint, the planned closing show for this season has had to be cancelled - due to “unforeseen circumstances”.

The play series, which champions new writing, revealed yesterday that Dead Husband’s Club, by Rob Drummond - who recently co-created musical Wallace with Dave Hook - has been scrapped just three weeks out for reasons which have not been disclosed.

However, the show must go on, and the organisation has already found a replacement in the form of Parasocial Activity, a one-woman play written and performed by Scottish actor Briony Martha.

Parasocial Activity, which won one of The Scotsman’s prestigious Fringe First Awards during this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, was inspired by a chance meeting Ms Martha had during the pandemic in a Glasgow branch of Costa with actor James McAvoy. The meeting really happened - the subsequent events in her play, she was quick to ascertain when I interviewed her in August, did not.

The exciting twist, however, happened at the end of the festival, when McAvoy himself watched the play, branding it a “bloody triumph”.

He said at the time on social media: “Funny, moving, upsetting and thought provoking. It’s winning all the awards and it’s sold out, but please look out for this show touring the UK and America in the coming months, as it’s got to be getting snapped up by theatres everywhere.”

Turns out he was right. Let’s see if he turns up at Oran Mor for another viewing.

Rona Munro and Rufus Norris. | Raw Material

Yee-hah!

Rufus Norris, the former director of the National Theatre and who is now to direct the final of Rona Munro’s James Plays, told me he actually started out his theatre career in Scotland. Rufus recalled his first ever professional theatre production, when he acted in a touring play called Yee Hah! [NB, I don’t actually know if there is an exclamation mark at the end of the title and there appears to be no trace of it on the internet, so I’m just going to assume that, in the style of “Oliver!” there was].

“The first job I ever did as an actor, I toured the Highlands and Islands in 1989,” he said. “It was a play about the country and western scene. We actually rehearsed in Stockton-on-Tees in the north of England and toured out of there. We went up to Shetland and all around the Highlands and Islands. I was playing the fiddle and playing the geordie and singing country and western songs. In the days when you had to get an Equity card, that’s how I got mine.”

Dougie and friends

Dougie MacLean’s annual Shades of Amber festival kicks off this weekend, where the Caledonia icon will of course, headline, alongside a gang of his buddies.

Based at Cardney Steading near Dunkeld in Perthshire, the three day festival this year includes four seated concerts, an open mic, a fire-pit song session and a film and music session hub and an exhibition of watercolours and weavings by his wife, Jennifer MacLean. The PR promises that among others including Capercaillie’s fiddle player Charlie McKerron, Sheena Wellington and the MacDonald Brothers and members of the Dougie MacLean band, the event will feature MacLean’s “new musical friend” Beluga Lagoon, aka wildlife filmmaker Andrew O'Donnell.

Festivities kick off on Friday night.