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Two Short Plays by Joan Ure

Something in it for Cordelia – Dir. Clunie Mackenzie
Something in it for Ophelia – Dir. Helen Cuinn

With the permission of the Scottish Society of Playwrights

EDFRINGEREVIEW **** 4/5
“The script doesn’t hesitate to juxtapose mundane modern realities with the Shakespearean context, often to comic effect”

A rare opportunity to see two comedy plays by one of Scotland’s lesser known but important playwrights of the 1970s. 

In the late 1970’s Robert Robinson asked Charles Nowosielski to direct a series of late night shows at ‘The Rep’ (in Dundee) .

The first proved to be a Joan Ure Play…Something in it for Cordelia, a fun-filled surreal comedy.

The play with its sister play…Something in it for Ophelia, is best described in Christopher Small’s excellent introduction to the published  collection JOAN URE Five Short Plays

“Something In it for Cordelia and Something in it for Ophelia could be described as rescue operations for two of the most put-upon of Shakespeare’s females”.

However, they are two very differing pieces which both highlight Joan Ure’s penetrating wit and acute sensibility regarding the position of women in Scottish society.

Set during the Edinburgh Festival, Cordelia plucks her cantankerous father Old King Lear of Scotland,  from the stage of the Assembly Hall before the final scene and races down the Royal Mile pushing him in a wheelchair to Waverley Station to catch the last train to the highlands.  As they wait they have their first real conversation.  He is the typical demanding old male so well kent in Scottish society.

In Ophelia, the position is somewhat reversed. Fresh from watching a performance of Hamlet two strangers are on the platform at Waverley, having missed the train to Glasgow. In this piece the girl, Hannah has strong feelings that there should be more for Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet than Shakespeare provided. The plot unfolds as she faces an intelligent older man, Martin who somewhat disagrees.

Photo right:

Angela Cassidy as Hannah
John McColl as Martin

Rehearsal for Something in it for Ophelia

Both plays are fun-filled with Ure’s inimitable sense of humour shining through. Her care for the position of women in society is as in all her works, paramount.

Christopher Small also wrote
” When Joan Ure died early in 1978, at the height of her powers, the loss to Scottish writing, and especially writing for the stage was immeasurable …she was just beginning to receive the recognition long overdue to her talents.”

Clunie Mackenzie and Helen Cuinn direct.

Read  **** Review

Read an Appreciation of Joan Ure and her work by Gioia Angeletti of the University of Parma, Italy.

Tue. 5 – Sat. 9 Aug
Tue. 12- Sat. 16 Aug

4.00pm ( 5.15 pm )

Duddingston Kirk Manse Gardens
Venue 121
Space: The Marquee (limited seating capacity)

Wheelchair access, disabled toilets, disabled parking

Fringe Box Office 0131 226 0000

Quick links to other plays Mary Stewart and  The Magic Quest