The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Keeping it in the family: Play from Byrne’ s book
“Like a lot of us, I’ve had more time to think lately,” says Jeanine Byrne from her home in Edinburgh.
“Life has changed, and I’ve been able to think about different ways of being creative. For me, that’s always been about writing.
“You know what it’s like, you get busy on the treadmill earning a living, and lose sight of other forms of creativity. With more time on my hands I was able to sit down and actually start thinking of ideas I had in my head that I’d wanted to write for a long time.”
For her first commissioned piece, streamed as an audio play next week through Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s Sound Stage platform, Byrne has looked close to home for inspiration.
Donald & Benoit is an adaptation of the children’s story by her husband, the artist and playwright John Byrne, which was published a decade ago.
“I’ve always loved that book, the characters are adorable,” she says.
“I’ve said to John on various occasions, ‘do you not think that would make a really lovely stage show?’ He’s always been terribly busy and didn’t show that much interest, but after I’d written a couple of other things he enjoyed, eventually he said to me, ‘listen, why don’t you have a go?’”
Byrne wrote a scene or two at a time and read them to her husband, and he liked what she was doing. Then she passed the finished piece on to Elizabeth Newman, artistic director at Pitlochry (where John had a Sound Stage play on earlier this year), who was very enthusiastic.
The fantastical story tells of Benoit, a little boy who lives in a Scottish seaside town, whose fisherman father has been lost at sea. He meets a talking cat named Donald, and together they go
on adventures. Byrne originally adapted the story for the stage, so changes had to be made when Newman asked her to make it an audio play instead.
“The book is a simple tale with beautiful illustrations,” she says.
“What we needed to do to make it into a decentsized show was flesh out some of the characters, and create new characters as well. In the book there’s a group of dogs, the Dancing Devil Dogs, who are a band. The only one that was spoken about by name was Angus, who is the leader, and there’s a page where John has drawn them and given them names, but with no dialogue between them.
“I made a few into bigger characters, and decided on them being different types of dogs as well, which was good fun, then created dialogue around that.
“Another character, Mistress Macsporran, I made her part bigger, just because there needs to be a lot more action and things happening for a show than for a children’s book. But I try to stay very true to the book as the genesis of the story, and the friendship between Donald and Benoit.”
Jeanine is no stranger to the theatre – for many years she worked in lighting and costume, including on John’s adaptation of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya and the National Theatre of Scotland’s adaptation of his television show Tutti Frutti.
“We knew each other as colleagues and friends for a few years,” she says.
“Then life had changed for both of us, we met again when circumstances were different, and we fell in love. We’ve had 15 extremely happy years since then, I’ve felt very lucky.”
Now they’re both writing, the creative dynamic hasn’t changed between them much. They still have their own separate studios in the garden, and they bounce ideas off one another for inspiration.
“(Writing’s) not really felt like a great leap,” she says.
“John thinks it’s funny that I’m being asked to do interviews now, and so do I. It’s weird, but in a nice way. We have a good laugh about that, but it gives him a break (from having to do them).”
The intention is for the play to come to the Pitlochry stage soon, where the planned dance sequences – Jeanine wrote songs for it with Pitlochry’s associate director Ben Occhipinti – can be restored. In the meantime, there’s plenty more she wants to write.
“Hopefully that won’t stop now.”
Donald & Benoit by Jeanine Byrne will be available to hear through Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s Sound Stage from Friday 17 to Sunday 19 December.
Book at pitlochryfestivaltheatre. com