The Breathing House - World Premiere

Awarded the 2003 Critics Award for Theatre in Scotland
For Best design - Calum Colvin

Playwright - Peter Arnott
Director - Kenny Ireland
Designer - Calum Colvin
Costume Designer -Shirley Robinson
Lighting Designer - Jeanine Davies
Composer & Music Director - Matthew Scott
Video - Michael Windle
Company - Royal Lyceum Theatre Company
Venue - Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh

Reviewer - Thelma Good

Big in scope, imagination, cast, talent and creative thrust.
Fear, Love and Lies might be another title for this play which breathes indeed.
Set in an Edinburgh of the 1860's just a side step away from historical truth, it's the city as it ever is.
Oh so respectable in its public veneer but once you've got the posh frock off, there's nae knickers
and gey few excuses. Cloon is a photographer by night and a public health official by day. Just after
the play opens he is taking a picture of his wife in her coffin who's just died in childbirth. That scene
tells as much in image as in the verbal exchanges and is a taster of the 46 to come.

Sometimes there is dialogue, sometimes there is none or little, but every scene communicates,
pushing the play onwards, adding imagery to it. And the cast from the oldest to the youngest give
tangible, strong performances, in their individual roles and as the street life of Edinburgh and the
seaside of Whitby. These are people we know, emotional chemicals we have been fixed by.
In recognition we laugh, shudder and as it draws to its end, tears may fall. Connections - recognising
and not recognising them- is another strand in this big play. Cloon's work colleague Gilbert,
Forbes Masson, has a living wife Elizabeth, Jennifer Black, but she's aware that he has an interest
in Agnes, Cora Bisset, their house maid. The thrown out Agnes is taken by Gilbert to the Breathing
House, even though he knows the Old Town tenement has more than its share of births and deaths.
The growing agonies of the trio are developed to moving effect by all three actors.

Meanwhile Cloon finds increasing harmony with his servant Hannah, something not done then. In a
scene of great and wordless tenderness, luminously played by Neil McKinven as Cloon and Kathryn
Howden as Hannah, he finds her working strongly attractive. But unknown to him she also visits the
Breathing House where Rachael, played with driven feel by Janette Foggo, her religious sister lives
with a young girl, the haunting Sorrow, Kirsty Mackay.

Nor is the quality of this production just in the acting or direction. Jeanine Davies's lighting is striking
in its shadow and light. Calum Colvin's set with its two off-centred revolves, creating small rooms
and busy, wide streets by turn is a exciting stage design debut from an artist famed for his 3 and 2
dimensional art. In the suggested rooms the Victorian paintings of Walter Scott, Robert Burns,
Robert Louis Stevenson and Lord Byron all underlining the Scottish mix of success, private disaster
and scandal. The videos by Michael Windle give us evocative black and white images of Cloon's
picture of working women and Edinburgh back then, skilfully directed to evoke atmosphere without
halting the pace, while Matthew Scott's often lyrical music is never intrusive but always apposite to
what we see. Last but not least the stage crew do an excellent job of setting the frequent scene
changes, in this production the ensemble cast clearly includes all behind as well as on the stage.

It's a production which for three weeks will answer the question "where's yer national theatre now?"
It's on the stage at the Royal Lyceum. In this his last production for the Royal Lyceum its outgoing
Artistic Director Kenny Ireland has shown us again, as he did in Victory, what we are failing to do
enough of. Big plays and big productions, big in scope, in imagination, in cast and talent and
creative thrust. And indeed probably big in budget, but so worth it when it delivers a production
(and a new play too in this case) so developed and sharp.

The Breathing House powerfully works nearly every second of its 2 hours 15 minutes plus time,
a considerable feat for a new play. Going beyond the veneer of polite society, encompassing
the good at heart, the weak, the doing all right and the bottom of the pile, The Breathing House
doesn't only bring to life the Auld Reekie of 1860s. It also reflects and recalls the paradoxes of
our Edinburgh or any city, which breathes the same duplicitous air today.

© Thelma Good 26 April 2003 - Published on EdinburghGuide.com

The Award for Best Design went to Calum Colvin, one of Scotland's most respected
photographic artists making his debut as a theatre designer. His giant breathing bellows,
like the bellows of an old-fashioned camera, were designed for Peter Arnott's impressive
new Victorian melodrama, The Breathing House. It was produced by the Royal Lyceum
Theatre Company, Edinburgh and directed by Kenny Ireland, who is about to retiring from
being its Artistic Director after 10 years of seeing the company into its present vibrant form.

Cast:
Cloon - Neil McKinven.
Hannah - Kathryn Howden.
Gilbert - Forbes Masson.
Agnes - Cora Bisset.
Elizabeth - Jennifer Black.
Rachael - Janette Foggo.
Littlejohn - Michael MacKenzie.
Davey - Ronnie Simon.
Abercrombie/Minister 1/Dr Moffat - Barrie Hunter.
Juggler/Minster2/Turnkey - Mark McDonnell.
Katie - Jodie Campbell.
Sorrow - Kirsty Mackay.
All other parts played by members of the company.

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