Plenty to cherish as drama is given its head
Another work on which opinion varied was Clyde Nouveau, Ian Heggie's ''disappointing new comedy'' (Observer). Not disappointing for me; I was impressed by the play and by Michael Boyd's production for the Tron theatre company.
We are told it is a reworking of Ben Jonson's The Alchemist, and while it has the same byzantine kind of plot that Jonson revelled in I don't think it helps much to look for close parallels. The modish world which Heggie explores and explodes is shot with greed, envy, rancour and duplicity -- if lust could be added to that list it would be Jonsonian indeed, but Clyde Nouveau is a little thin on concupiscence; quite chaste, I feel in retrospect, for a comedy of bad manners.
Having a way with words, Heggie makes poetry even of expletives. Graham Johnston's atmospheric warehouse set serves the play well, and there is beautifully judged central performance by Douglas Henshall as the gull.
These were my highlights of the main festival programme. The best that I saw on the fringe were a delicious production, Poor Liza, which needs no translation though in Russian, with the mercurial Olga Lebedova adding starlike lustre to the role of peasant girl betrayed in love, and a dark, frightening fantasy on Hitler emergent called Mein Kampf. Farce. Both these continue at the Traverse this week.
* Clyde Nouveau opens at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, tomorrow and runs until September 17.
John Fowler The Herald - 28 Aug 1989