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On August 16 this year Theatre Alba is thirty

With a number of cast and crew three decades older, it’s perhaps no surprise that curtain up is 7.30pm instead of midnight, but the sense of adventure still remains...

There’s no curtain for a start, as actors and audience brave the Scottish summer weather. Yes, most Alba productions take place outside.
 
Thirty years ago, the venue was Edinburgh’s Regent Gardens. For the past thirteen, those of Duddingston Kirk Manse have provided the picturesque backdrop to the company's performances, with the enthusiastic support of those members of the congregation who serve as ushers, ticket sellers and dispensers of tea, coffee and biscuits at the interval.
 
The company’s focus was initially on the Scots tongue, with its play list including Tamlane, The Wallace, The Shepherd Beguiled, The Bruce, The Lass Wi’ The Muckle Mou and The Puddok an the Princess. The Thrie Sisters and Macbeth were also “rendered intae Scots”. 
 
More recently, however, Shakespeare has been left as originally written in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Taming of the Shrew and The Tempest, and audiences have enjoyed other English classics such as St Joan and A Man for All Seasons. 
 
Chekhov is one of director Charles Nowosielski’s literary heroes, and last year saw Alba perform an adaptation (by Scots playwright Jo Clifford) of The Seagull. With a real loch shimmering behind the “stage”, seldom can an audience have felt the presence of the play’s ever-present but non-speaking character. Which is exactly why Nowosielski wanted the production to go ahead in the first place. 
 
And Chekhov will be the focus of the company’s 2011 Fringe productions: 
  • • five lunchtime performances of The Good Doctor (Neil Simon’s series of tragi-comedic vignettes based on a number of the short stories that first brought Chekhov to prominence) by its amateur Adult Leisure Group;
  • • Two one-act plays - The Bear and Smoking is Bad For You - for the late afternoon; and
  • • another collaboration between Alba and Jo Clifford, as she adapts The Cherry Orchard.
There will also be a Russian theme to the children’s show that, thanks to the writing and directing talent of Clunie Mackenzie, is now as essential a part of the summer programme as the evening play. Baba Yaba is coming to get you!
 
Away from the Fringe, the younger generation also benefits from the company’s desire to foster interest in the theatre as a challenging and fulfilling alternative to the games console.
 
Live music has always featured in Alba’s productions. More often than not composed by Richard Cherns, who may even admit to being Runrig’s keyboard player for a period during the 1980’s, haunting melodies capture the intensity of many a dramatic moment.
 
While this year sees us back in the (old) USSR, current plans should see Irish eyes smiling in 2012 and a Scots homecoming the following year as the company restores its Celtic connections, before a suitably cosmopolitan recognition of the artistic breadth of the Commonwealth in 2014.