For the last month the new spring season of work at Dundee Rep Theatre has been Schrödinger’s Theatre Season to the Rep’s artistic director Andrew Panton – both there and not there in theory, until he sees it happening before him.
Now, the Rep’s ensemble is in rehearsals as planned for their big opening production, Lucy Kirkwood’s contemporary play The Children.
“When we closed A Christmas Carol in December, I was thinking ahead to The Children wondering, will I be going into rehearsals on the 24th of January?” says Panton.
“You just never know, because we all know what happened 12 months ago.
“But luckily going from A Christmas Carol, which was a bigger show with a bigger cast in lots of different departments, into The Children, which is a three-hander with just the Ensemble in the room, it’s got agility built into it.
“If we needed to change things to do it, then it will be a much smaller machine to move around.
“But happily, we all started this week and we’re having a brilliant time.
“It’s just so great to be in rehearsals working on such an amazing play, it’s a total gift.”
Other big drawcards
Alongside The Children, the big draws of this spring’s Rep programme are The Bookies, a new comedy about gambling, and Optimism, a new work produced by Dundee Rep Young Company.
There’s also a touring visit from the Vanishing Point theatre company and their gripping adaptation of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, an unsettling body horror for pandemic times.
There are also individual dates by comedians Jack Docherty and Craig Hill, and musician Horse.
First of all, though, next weekend sees the return of The Life and Times by the Rep’s sister company Scottish Dance Theatre.
First staged last year as a streaming performance through Rep Studios, this version will see what’s described as a cinematic and surreal dance journey set to a sumptuous soundtrack of Baroque music.
It will be performed live in the theatre while simultaneously being streamed online.
“Last year it was a world premiere, created by Scottish Dance Theatre’s artistic director Joan Clevillé with the full company,” says Panton.
“As it was designed for camera, the live audience here at the Rep will see a little bit of the behind-the-scenes of that.
“It’s like being in a TV studio audience, but there will also be screens where they can see what’s going out on the broadcast – it’ll be a real hybrid experience for that live audience, we’re excited to bring it back.”
After that, The Children opens at the beginning of March. First performed at London’s Royal Court Theatre in 2016 and then on Broadway the following year, this will be the Scottish premiere.
The Rep Ensemble’s Irene Macdougall, Emily Winter and Barry Hunter star its three roles.
“The Children is a play I’ve wanted to do for quite a few years, and we managed to get the rights to programme it now,” says Panton.
‘We’ve got to do this play’
“It’s a play I’ve read with the Ensemble a couple of times in the last two years, while we’ve been closed to the public but still doing a lot of research and development work, and as soon as we read it the whole room lit up.
We were like, we’ve got to do this play, it resonates right now to audiences.
“It’s a great, beautiful piece of writing from Lucy, it’s never been done in Scotland before and it casts brilliantly for our key ensemble members.”
Kirkwood’s inspiration for the play was the Fukushima nuclear reactor explosion in Japan in 2011, but the subject is approached from a different angle.
“It’s a play about what you hand on to your children, to the next generation,” says Panton.
“It’s set in the very near future, after a significant nuclear power station disaster, but the resonances of programming it during what we’re living through now adds another layer.
“In the last two years we’ve been living in a very altered reality, as the retired nuclear scientists are in the play.
About The Children
“Hazel and Robin are a married couple, retired nuclear engineers who still live near the power station they worked at.
“We discover a significant event in the first 15 minutes, then they have a visitor named Rose. Really, it’s about working out why Rose has come to visit.
“She’s an old colleague and friend, and we slowly find out the relationships between the three of them and the big decision that has to be made.
“It’s ninety minutes straight through, with a lot of twists and turns. It’s really quite gripping, as much about those relationships as it is about the much bigger themes they’re discussing.”
The six years since it was first seen, he says, cause the play to resonate in a different way.
“Post-COP26, we’re really talking about environmental themes, and those themes run through the piece. That sounds like it’s really heavy, but it’s a very funny piece, while dealing with those massive, world-changing themes.
“The characters are sparky, they’re funny, it’s a relationship drama as much as it’s an eco-thriller. From here, Lucy Kirkwood went on to executive produce Succession and she does a lot of TV and film.
“You can feel that in the writing, the vitality and the urgency of it.”
Black comedy from The Bookies
In May, the Rep will also be producing The Bookies by Michael Burnett and Joseph McCann, a new black comedy set in a run-down Edinburgh bookie.
“We’ve been talking to Mikey and Joe about various ideas for new writing, and they pitched this to me,” says Panton.
“It riffs a bit on the Gregory Burke style, on plays like Gagarin Way – very Scottish, very east coast. A comedy thriller, is what I’d call it.
“Yes, it’s about gambling, and these highly addictive machines that are the crack cocaine of the bookie’s industry.
“Mikey actually works in a bookie’s shop, he has for years, so he understands it.
A world premiere
“Joe is a Scottish black writer, so one of the characters is a young, black Scot.
“It deals partly with the themes of what it’s like to be growing up as a young black man in Scotland – maybe some of the things that we would imagine about that, and maybe some of the things we wouldn’t.
“It’s a world premiere, a brand new commission, and Douglas Maxwell has been working on the project as dramaturg.”
The Bookies’ director Sally Reid – also a well-known stage and television actor – is an old friend of the Rep.
“We had a great time working with her on (the Jim Maclean bioplay) Smile, and I was really keen to find another show for her to direct,” says Panton.
“This one really plays to her strengths, she’s definitely a good comedy director. She’s great with text and with nuance, and she’s really adept in terms of the development of story.
Magic realism moments
“Then there are some magic realism moments in this play, where as a director you have to look at it and figure out how to realise it.
“We saw in Smile the very sensitive way Sally dealt with some of those moments, in that context it was about Jim’s dementia.
“In this play they’re more comedic, but they still need a really clear treatment, and what she’s doing with The Bookies so far has been great.”
As well as a return for all the Rep’s classes and engagement projects, the theatre’s Associate Directors for Engagement Jess Thorpe and Tashi Gore, who joined just before lockdown, will finally get to put some work onstage with the Dundee Rep Young Company’s Optimism.
It’s being devised with the participants right now, but Panton says it will be about “being young in this moment, shedding light on some of the things that age group is thinking about, and probably teaching us a few things about what leadership looks like.”
‘Theatre has got to stay ambitious’
Across the board, it’s an excellent, exciting-looking programme.
“That’s good to hear,” says Panton. “You never know when you put it out there… we’ve been living with these ideas for a while, but I’m really excited about it.
“Theatre has got to stay ambitious as a sector, we’ve got to keep reminding our audiences why we’re vital, why we keep telling these stories and why they need to keep engaging with us.”
– Dundee Rep Theatre’s spring 2022 begins with Scottish Dance Theatre’s The Life and Times on Friday 11t and Saturday 12 February. Lucy Kirkwood’s play The Children, runs from Tuesday 1 to Saturday 19 March.
See www.dundeerep.co.uk for full listings.
