Lockdown lifelines that brought the stage to our sofas
Incidental Moments Of The Day (YouTube) Verdict: Nelson’s column draws to a close ★★★★☆
Credo (iPlayer/national theatreofscotland.com) Verdict: Signing off in style ★★★★☆
WE’RE not out of the woods yet, as far as Covid is concerned, and there may be more woods on the way — like those that came to meet Macbeth at Dunsinane.
But although some really great work emerged out of this year’s lockdown, the time has already come to say goodbye to some of it.
One was the charming series of Apple Family plays, written for Zoom by New York- based playwright Richard Nelson — the first was released on the city’s Public Theater website. The Apple clan, in Upstate New York, came to feel like old friends to me.
I have been particularly grateful for the sanity of the trilogy — the final episode of which is called Incidental Moments Of The Day.
It follows the usual format, with the fifty-something Apple siblings shooting the breeze on successive Zoom calls, discussing themselves, the Government, their hopes and fears.
In this instalment we find retired brother Richard (Jay O. Sanders) moving house, after finding a girlfriend who’s inspired him to take up theatre.
Melancholy Marian (Laila Robins) is away on a date with a fellow whose face she’s never seen, thanks to his Covid mask. Younger sister Jane (Sally Murphy), who’s struggling with depression, wonders if sis’s mystery man actually has a nose.
MEANWHILE, Jane’s partner Tim (Stephen Kunken) finds himself in his childhood bedroom, now that his mother has moved into a care home.
Perhaps most bravely, the older sister Barbara (Maryann Plunkett) expresses her fears about the continuing charge of the woke brigade.
And in an unusual touch for the normally chat-orientated Nelson, one of Barbara’s former English students logs on from France and performs a dance to a piece of ragtime music.
If, like me, you loved the first two in the series, What Do We Need To Talk About? and And So We Come
Forth, then this is a fond farewell. There are other plays in Nelson’s war chest, and now we’ve sampled his work, perhaps an intrepid producer will bring some of it to the UK.
LIZ LOCHHEAD, Scotland’s first lady of verse, is an equal fountain of good sense in Credo, part of the terrific Scenes For Survival shorts from the National Theatre of Scotland, which conclude this week. I will miss them greatly. The poet offers her rhyming rules on writing for the stage: ‘ Just tell the one and only, ever lovin’, rootin’ tootin’ story!’ Amen to that. Credo is a wry but warm sixminute work featuring Lochhead, looking a bit like a bag lady, sitting on a bench in a Glasgow open air theatre and reading from a battered script binder. Andy Clark illustrates her commandments with Chaplin- esque routines on a stage, which are set to jazz trumpet. Also worth a squint this week, from the same series, is The Quiz, which features Sanjeev Kohli as Sukhdeep, a Currys area manager organising his high school’s 30th anniversary reunion quiz.
It’s a bit like The Office, on furlough in Glasgow, with a nice twist at the end.
Not everything was gold in Scenes For Survival — including, surprisingly, Scottish-American actor Alan Cumming’s creepy perambulations in the woods near his home in the Catskills, New York.
But I shall remember Mark Bonnar as the penitent politician in Larchview, and Peter Mullan as the Glaswegian hardman visited by disgruntled birds in Fatbaws, long after this year is over.