by Bill Bryden
The Harland & Wolff Shed, Govan,
Bill Bryden’s epic promenade production of a Govan regiment in WW1 with music by John Tams and Phil Cunningham
Bill Bryden’s promenade production celebrated the lives of a group of young Govan volunteers during the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The feat of engineering and creative endeavour to produce this epic production at the Harland & Wolff Engine Shed was seen by over 80,000 in Govan and millions more when it was broadcast on BBC2 in 1994 and subsequently in 2016 and has remained vivid in people’s mind to this day.
Bill Dudley, the show’s designer wrote about it:
“The Battle of The Somme and the subsequent trench warfare on the Western Front from 1914-1918, stamped the then-new 20th Century with its most enduring image: No Mans Land, that lethal wasteland of devastation which signalled the end of both innocence and faith with its sudden destruction of the natural world and human life by a completely new and terrifying mechanised process. It was this, strangely visual event that we wanted to describe and commemorate 80 years later and where better, we thought, than Harland and Wolff where we had staged The Ship in 1990. The shed seemed to contain the very essence of the early 20th Century machine age so appropriate for this most grim industrialised war.
We decided to lay out a section of the wasteland exploiting the great size of our shed/theatre. Because its very length of 250 feet was no more than the amount of ground sometimes gained after days of fighting which often cost thousands of lives. To utilise this epic space to the full, we again adopted the promenade style, where the audience move with the action so that they too advance along the 250ft and retreat and advance again and retreat again before the day is over. The other element in our wasteland is our version of the old theatrical device known as the Deus-ex-Machina or The God of the Machine, which in 17th Century theatre lowered in the Gods and the Goddesses. In our version, we have reinstated the bridge crane as used when the shed was first built and which rides on the original rails that can carry over 50 tonne. This mobile crane represents the remorseless, inhuman tide of destruction as it cruises back and forth, like a great bird scavenging over the battlefield. Its central icon is the Angel of Death, here called the Angel of Mons. She is a distillation of the many (over 10,000) sightings and mass hallucinations reported by allied soldiers, who saw visions of angels and folk heroes, saints and lost relatives in the sky over the Western Front. For us, she is the arbitrary hand of fate and the bringer of release from this hell.
In researching this piece, I have been struck by a paradox of trench warfare which many poets and artists have described and that is the terrible beauty of it all, particularly at night with the searchlights and starshell tracer bullets and gas clouds playing over the underground city of the trenches. We have tried to evoke this eerie firework display whose effect was so sinister, despite its beauty and scale. My own grandfather was gassed on the Somme but he would never talk to me about it. In working on our show, I have come closer to understand what he went through.”
CAST
Colours – JIMMY LOGAN
Hughie Frizell – RUSSELL HUNTER
Billy Blair – IAIN CONNELL
Frankie Nealon – GARY BAKEWELL
Morris Burns – WILLIAM MACBAIN
Russell Enoch – STUART BOWMAN
Norrie Beaton – DEREK RIDELL
Gus Adams – IAIN MACCOLL
Miss Fensom – MORAG HOOD
Bunty – JULIET CADZOW
Nessie – ASHLEY JENSEN
Rebecca – VICTORIA NAIRN
Flora – SANDRA McNEELEY
Ian the Piper – FRED MORRISON
Tam, a Miner – LESTER SIMPSON
The Gaellain MacCaskill/Medical Orderly – STEPHEN SPEED
An Angel – DEBORAH POPE
Oliver Roche Gordon – SEBASTIAN GRAHAM JONES
Gerhard Kupfler – LEWIS ALLAN
Smythe – FREDDIE BOARDLEY
COMPANY
Director – BILL BRYDEN
Co-Director – SEBASTIAN GRAHAM JONES
Design – WILLIAM DUDLEY
Music – JOHN TAMS
Additional Music – PHIL CUNNINGHAM
Movement – STUART HOPPS
Lighting – CHRIS ELLIS
Technical Consultant – STEWART CROSBIE
Production Manager – SIMON MARLOW with DAVID THAYERS
General Manager – STEVEN THOMSON
Associate Producer – EDWARD CROZIER
Producer – NICHOLAS NEWTON
BAND
FRED MORRISON, ROD PATERSON, JAMES PRIME, JOHN A SAMPSON, STUART SMITH, MIKE TRAVIS, WENDY WEATHERBY, TADEUSZ WYZGOWSKI (Production Musical Director)
The Big Picnic | Official Film | 1994
