'We'd been doing a lot of, to be perfectly honest, bloody miserable theatre," says Alasdair McCrone, artistic director of, and actor for, Mull Theatre.
It's a frank admission, and one offered as an explanation of why he alighted upon the acclaimed Canadian play The Drawer Boy.
"I was looking for something that was positive, engaging, had an emotional content, and was funny and uplifting," McCrone continues, referring to Michael Healey's drama about two ageing farmers in rural Ontario in the early 1970s and the uncomfortable arrival in their midst of a young actor who wants to construct a theatrical "truth" from their stories. Mull Theatre toured the play around the Western Isles and much of the Highlands last year, to audience acclaim, and is reviving it for a major tour of Scotland, ranging from Inverness to the central belt and the Borders.
The play - in which Miles (the actor) proves to be a catalyst in the lives of Morgan and Angus (the latter of whom suffered brain damage during the London Blitz) - has a strong history in Scotland. Its Scottish premiere in 2008, directed at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow by Andy Arnold and starring Brian Ferguson (who is currently playing Hamlet at the Citizens Theatre) as Miles, came four years before its first outing in London.
In fact, McCrone comments, it was Arnold who put him onto Healey's play. Mull Theatre were looking for a piece which was substantial, humorous and humane, and the Tron's director knew this Canadian play about friendship, memory and human endurance would be just the thing.
He says: "We use that phrase 'a well made play', and this is almost classically well made. There are pay-offs all over the place. The characters are beautifully drawn. There's a huge emotional journey for all of the characters, and for the audience as well."
There's been a considerable journey for this production too. Last year's tour featured, as Angus and Morgan, the well-established double act of McCrone and fine comic actor Barrie Hunter (who played together, memorably, in Tom McGrath's Laurel And Hardy). They were ably assisted by award-winning young actor Kevin Lennon as Miles.
This year, in the absence of Lennon, McCrone and Hunter will be joined by James Mackenzie, best known to many as TV's Raven. The director, who worked with Mackenzie on Mull when the latter was 17, was delighted by the actor's response.
"There he was, watching Barrie and I getting caught up in it and he was in that place as well," McCrone remembers. The director is convinced that Mackenzie will complement beautifully the "symbiotic relationship" of the McCrone/Hunter double act.
The reason actors get so "caught up" in the play, says the director, is that it has a powerful emotional truth, only enhanced by the humour of the piece. "We have to be unafraid of the fact that it is a classical comedy," says McCrone. "It's meant to make you feel good about people."
The Drawer Boy tour runs from October 16 to November 7. Visit comar.co.uk
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