Drama at the Depot
Script in hand performance
Leith Depot: Monday 12 Feb 2024
Report by Andy Moseley
Drama at the Depot, a new bi-monthly evening of short plays performed script-in-hand launched at Leith Depot on Monday. Playwright Andy Moseley was there and files this report.
Sophie Good, a co-founder of Drama at the Depot, was one of the writers who regularly contributed to the Village Pub Theatre in Leith throughout most of the 2010s. So it may be no surprise that the much-missed evening is the inspiration for this new bi-monthly event that launched this week at Leith Depot with its first evening of six short plays.
Sarah McGillivray and Mark O’Neill in rehearsal for Drama at the Depot (Tainted Love). Pic: Jill Franklin.
Drama at the Depot has been set up with the aim of showcase new writing from writers living in and around Edinburgh in an informal environment.
The event is the brainchild of Good with Penpal Productions – set up by another Village Pub Theatre writer, Jill Franklin, with fellow Edinburgh based playwrights Jane Sunderland and Mell Flinn in 2019 as a vehicle for producing their own work.
The small intimate theatre at Leith Depot definitely fits the bill, and the atmosphere at the first event was aided and abetted by a near capacity crowd that meant it was standing room only for late arrivals.
Andy Corelli Jones directed the plays, which were performed script in hand by Mark O’Neill, Kirsten Maguire and Sarah McGillivray. With only an afternoon’s rehearsal ahead of the performances, it was a testament to Jones and the actors that each of the plays looked and sounded like they had been in development for much longer as characters and relationships came across as fully formed rather than works in progress.
The theme for the evening was Tainted Love, which was explored in different ways by different writers, including myself. Carolyn Yates opened the proceedings with In Memoriam, set at a funeral that was referred to as a celebration by someone who was unknown to the family of the deceased, but clearly knew more about her than they did.
Sarah McGillivray, Mark O’Neill and Kirsten Maguire in rehearsal for Drama at the Depot (Tainted Love). Pic Jill Franklin.
Sunderland’s Birthday followed. In this play the metaphorical elephant in the room became several actual elephants (albeit of the toy variety) that caused just as much difficulty to the person who continued to have them given to her. My play Jack, a monologue about a woman (played by Maguire) who breathes a sigh of relief when her husband is taken to hospital, possibly never to return, rounded off the first half.
The second half saw Stargazer, an excerpt from a longer play by Clare Cockburn, alongside Keith, a comedy by Good about the friendship between an AI generated assistant and a widowed mother that her daughter does not approve of, and Franklin’s Tainted Love Remix which charts a relationship that is influenced if not defined by the titular track.
The variety of ways that the theme was explored across the plays, and the sequencing of them, meant that there was never a danger of repetition setting in. Mood and material were carefully balanced across both halves of the evening.
From the perspective of a writer, rather than an audience member, seeing Maguire in Jack was a personal highlight. Under Corelli Jones’s direction she brought the script to vivid life with a perfectly measured delivery that captured all the nuances of the character and her story, and held the audience’s attention from start to finish. This was all a writer could want and more than they could reasonably expect from script in hand scratch night style performances.
The next Drama at the Depot evening is planned for Monday 8 April with the theme Spring Fever. Penpal Productions plan is for this to become a regular bi-monthly event.
For anyone with fond memories of The Village Pub Theatre and anyone else interested in seeing new writing in a setting and format that shows it’s not just stand-up comedy that works in short sharp bursts, they may have created a go-to evening.
Drama at the Depot – Tainted Love
Leith Depot, 138-142 Leith Walk EH6 5DT
Mon 12 Feb 2024
Evening: 8pm.
Drama at the Depot – Spring Fever
Leith Depot, 138-142 Leith Walk EH6 5DT
Mon 8 April 2024
Evening: 8pm.
Tickets and details: Follow PenPals Productions on their socials.
Facebook: @PenPalsTheatre
Twitter/X: @PenPalsTheatre
