David in the Director's Chair: 'The Cake', 'Chamber Music', and 'Macburgers'
...three plays directed by the young thespian during his years at the RSAMD
For those of you who haven’t been subscribers for long (or if I simply haven’t repeated myself too much yet, ha!) for the past decade I've been researching David’s early theatre career in Scotland from his earliest plays as a young man in the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama’s (the RSAMD, now the Royal Conservatoire) Junior School until just before he filmed Takin' Over The Asylum - his big break - and moved to London to hit the stage there.
During the course of my research, I've uncovered over two dozen more plays he either performed in or directed as a student at the RSAMD (and afterwards) that aren’t listed anywhere…on any list of his work…in any internet space!!
But I gotta be upfront with y’all. While I’ve done a ton of research over the last ten years - deep dives into existing archival collections, periodicals and newspapers, ephemera, RSAMD drama department records, theatre company records, and interviews with people involved in the 20+ productions I’ve discovered - there’s a ton of research I still have to do. I freely admit I have huge gaps in my current knowledge. There are countless reasons for this. The Royal Conservatoire archives (while fabulous) also has large gaps in its records because it wasn’t established until a decade after David left the school! Production details for some plays were just not recorded for posterity. Some of the people involved have left us. And sometimes it’s as simple as the passage of time has faded people’s memories.
In other words, when new facts present themselves I’ll have no problem whatsoever correcting my (inevitable) errors. And I’ll tell you when I don’t know much about something. So - I don’t know much about the first two of the three plays I’m about to discuss, and I'll be speaking last about the one I know the most about.
Let’s get right into it!
David's often been asked if he'd like to direct. So far he's either answered in the 'maybe someday' or dipped his toes into executive producing - which is mostly a funding/monetary position rather than the guy in the director’s chair.
But in reality? David's already directed a few plays.
When David enrolled in the RSAMD, the school offered two options: a full-time, three-year Diploma of Dramatic Arts (DDA) course for those who wished to take up acting professionally, and a more generalized full-time three-year BA of Dramatic Studies (BA) validated by the University of Glasgow.
Interestingly - even though it was clearly the 17-yr old David's intent to become an actor - he chose the BA over the DDA. Certainly this was a two-fold decision on his part: for one, the student had to be age 19 to apply for the DDA course (which David wasn’t) while the BA accepted 17 yr olds. And as the BA offered an option for special one-year education courses to obtain a teaching certificate, the choice may have also been his concession to his parent's concerns that he have something to fall back on if his acting career attempts failed.
Students on David’s BA course did one full-scale production in front of an audience a year, as well as a varying number of internal mini-productions. The BA students themselves had to put these mini-productions together - oftentimes one of the students would direct while others were cast and crew. For the most part, these productions were only performed in front of the entire BA class, and were not performed in front of an audience.
The first of the three was a one-act vignette play called The Cake, written in 1985 by Scottish playwright Iain Heggie (who also wrote An Experienced Woman Gives Advice, a 1995 play David went on to star in). Originally included in the 1989 publication of Heggie’s iconic play, A Wholly Healthy Glasgow, The Cake was first performed as a rehearsed reading at the Royal Exchange Theatre in 1986. It was later given another rehearsed reading in 1989, when it was directed by Lindsay Posner (who later directed David in The Rivals in 2000.) By 1993, The Cake had become one of a series of six short sketches grouped together as The Sex Comedies. In its original published form, The Cake was the story of Archie and Danny, two sixty-ish lonely and sex-starved Glaswegian men battling each other over their expectations of a woman they've invited over for cake. But by the time it was grouped with The Sex Comedies, the men had morphed into two hot and bothered sisters vying for a young man they both fancied for sex to come to tea.
I don’t know much more about it than that, really. I've had no luck trying to find out which of the two variations David directed (though my guess would be its original form, with Danny and Archie). All I've been able to determine for certain is that David was the play’s director. If I had to make an educated guess on a time frame, I’d say it’s likely this play was one of David's first-year course objectives, placing it around 1989.
You can go to the Internet Archive and borrow A Wholly Healthy Glasgow if you wanted to read the short two-page script.
The second play was directed by David around 1990, likely during his second year at the RSAMD. Called Chamber Music and written in 1963 by absurdist playwright Arthur Kopit, the story is set in 1938 in the women’s wing in an insane asylum. Gathered together are eight women who believe they’re famous historical figures - Queen Isabella, Susan B. Anthony, Gertrude Stein, Joan of Arc, Pearl White, Osa Johnson, Amelia Earhart, and Mrs. Constanze Mozart - and the two male doctors who supervise them. As the play opens, the women have assembled for the “Sixth Annual Meeting of the Duly-Elected Grievance and Someday-Governing Committee of Wing Five, Women’s Section.”
But there are a few twists. One, Kopit implies one of the women - Amelia Earhart - is the only one who’s sane and is exactly who she says she is. And two, as the “hysterical” women begin to plan for a possible attack by the men’s wing, they think in order to stop the attack they must create a diversion - and what they do veers into actual homicide.
Sad to say, I know nothing else about this production or David’s time directing it. But if you’re now a bit curious about it, you can head to the Internet Archive and borrow Chamber Music and Other Plays by Arthur Kopit to read the script, or watch this 2015 performance by Theatre Artists Olympia on YouTube:
The last of the plays David directed was called MacBurger’s - Real Neat Scotch Fare.
As a requirement of his final year coursework, David and his fellow student, friend and flatmate Louise Delamere spent their Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings for a few months co-directing a group of 14-15 year old students at the RSAMD Junior School (a group David himself had participated in from ages 12 to 16). They planned to put on three performances in March of 1991.
As it turned out, their production was to be one out of only five productions of this play….EVER.
Why that is so is quite the story, and I hope y’all find this as fascinating as I did. So buckle in!
MacBurgers - Real Neat Scotch Fare was written in the autumn of 1988 by Steve Brown and Jenny Fraser. Jenny was a fellow student of David’s, and she and David had acted in a few other RSAMD productions together prior to David co-directing MacBurgers. She’s now known as Jenny Ryan and she’s been in various television dramas, including The Loch and Cracked as well as staples such as Monarch of the Glen and Taggart.
Oh, and by the way, a few months after Macburgers, David and Jenny also “starred” together in Horace Can’t Help It, a photo feature in the Student Magazine. I’ve written about it before! Go check it out by clicking the link below:
But back to Macburgers!
Brown and Fraser were commissioned to write Macburgers for an October 1988 production by the Edinburgh Senior and Middle Youth Theatres at Theatre Workshop. It was picked up by the Stirling District Youth Theatre for a second production in May 1989 at the MacRobert Arts Centre’s Studio Theatre. That production got many favorable reviews. By mid-1990, three other organizations - the RSAMD Junior School, the East Kilbride youth theatre company EK Eye, and Phantom Productions (who’d just done a little play you might’ve heard of called The Ghost of Benjy O’Neil!) - had approached Brown and Fraser for their permission to do productions of the play for themselves.
Macburgers was designed to feature a youthful cast and was a comedy about fast food workers combining dance and music set in a fictitious Scottish burger bar. It satirized the burger industry in general and Scotland’s image in particular, and was a celebration of youth sub-cultures. According to a 28 April 1989 article in the Stirling Observer, it was
a zestful satire on the fast food business. Set in a fictitious store and complete with stereotypical images of Scotland, the production explores the theory that fast food employees are as disposable as the plastic cartons the burgers come in.
After its run in Stirling, the first organization to do another production of Macburgers was the RSAMD Junior School. Some years ago now I spoke to one of the young junior school attendees, Owen Billcliffe (now a professional photographer in London), who played the role of Glen in Macburgers. He told me rehearsals for the play were in the RSAMD building in a room he believed was likely a dance training room, with “mirrors, and curtains that pulled around the walls. Hard pale wooden floor, white walls, and a low ceiling. As we got closer to the performance day, we moved to the small theatre we’d be performing in [the Chandler Studio Theatre], and also did dress rehearsals.”
Billcliffe said David and Louise worked extensively with all of the young junior students, coaching them separately on their various monologues and conducting exercises to help curb their nerves and get more into character. One such exercise was to partner the actors up and then blindfold one of them, who then held and felt their partner’s hands to get to know them by touch. Each blindfolded partner then had to feel the hands of every un-blindfolded person and identify their partner just by touch.
Billcliffe also told me about a time David conducted some "topping and tailing" or “cue to cue” runs with him, which were meant to cut out action and dialogue between cues during a technical rehearsal to save time. David coached him on a monologue he had and told him in advance to be ready to do the start and end; when David called out to him to skip to the end and he jumped there straight away, he recalls David being very impressed! “He was a very open, friendly man,” Billcliffe told me. “I felt a lot of trust.”
Macburgers was scheduled for three performances - on March 23rd, 1991 at 6:30pm, and on March 24, 1991 at 2pm and 6pm - and was a part of that year's annual Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama’s Junior School Programme at the Chandler Studio Theatre, on the RSAMD campus.
Now…if you’ll take a good look at the Macburgers programme pictured above, you’ll notice the following at the bottom:
-"Co-directed by Louise Delamere and David Tennant”.
A little over a week after David and Louise had finished their production, Macburgers found itself in the shallow end of what was to become a deep pool of trouble.
The first performance of the East Kilbride youth theatre company EK Eye’s production of Macburgers had gone on at the Village Theatre on 27 Mar 1991 without a hitch. But the day before the group’s 4 April performance, they received a letter from the law firm Barlow, Lyde & Gilbert, representing the McDonalds Corporation and its interests in both the US and the UK.
At first, the correspondence was cordial. McDonalds had heard (via a newspaper report in the Glasgow Evening News about the EK Eye production) that the company’s iconic golden arches was displayed in the theatre foyer. Additionally, it was “concerned” the play’s title was an indirect jab at the company’s name, and the play’s satirical and derogatory swipes at “low wages and poor working conditions” were defamatory. To satisfy itself, McDonalds requested Fraser and Brown provide a copy of the script to make sure its company’s reputation was not being slandered.
Things after this got nastier. A script was provided, and McDonalds immediately called it into question, noting it appeared the authors had based some of it on allegations made in a pamphlet entitled, “Working For Big Mac,” - a pamphlet which McDonalds had succeeded in proving was libelous against them. So they insisted changes to the script should be made before the performance could go on. Over the proverbial barrel, Fraser and Brown agreed to make these changes, and the EK Eye April 4-6 performances went on as planned with the agreed-upon changes.
But things did not end there. Not at all.
In a letter, McDonalds stated:
…McDonalds expressly reserve their right vigorously to enforce their legal rights against the author or authors of the script, and should they hear of any future intended productions they will take whatever steps are necessary to protect their reputation from further damage.
If you’ll recall, Phantom Productions had ALSO planned a production of Macburgers, which had been scheduled to go on in late May 1991 at Maryhill Central Community Halls in Glasgow. Now, that performance seemed threatened.
And of course, the local and national press got word about the legal wrangles.
Eventually McDonalds threatened a lawsuit to stop any further production of the play, claiming it was libelous against the restaurant. Fraser and Brown managed to get the restaurant to concede to allow the Phantom Productions’ May 23-24 performances to go ahead as scheduled - but only if they would sign an agreement it would never be performed again. Fraser and Brown didn’t have the monetary means to fight a large multinational corporation such as McDonald’s, and were forced to do just that or face further legal action.
Afterwards, Fraser and Brown began to set up a fund to help finance other members of the Scottish arts community who found themselves in a similar situation. The unfairness of it all aroused the ire of the local community, and twelve MP's, including five Scots - one of which was their local MP, George Galloway - backed the playwrights in motion on the commons order paper in the UK Parliament. In the order (which you can still see here) the MP's condemned McDonald's for "heavy handedness" and claimed the firm’s actions were a “gross over reaction".
Ultimately, nothing changed. The agreement the pair were forced to sign made sure Macburgers would be retired for good.
To this day, it has never been performed again.
—
If you're interested in the ridiculous legal kerfluffle about Macburgers - and what caused the fast food giant to strong-arm a few students who’d written a play that maybe a few hundred people had ever seen - you can go visit the Macburgers page of a website called McSpotlight.
McSpotlight was created by the McInformation Network, an independent group of global volunteers “dedicated to compiling and disseminating factual, accurate, up-to-date information - and encouraging debate - about the workings, policies and practices of the McDonald's Corporation and all they stand for.” On their introduction page, McSpotlight says they are the “biggest, loudest, most red, most read Anti-McDonald's extravaganza the world has ever seen.”
And yay to them!
In an act of defiance, McSpotlight has published the entirety of the script for Macburgers. After all, publishing the script isn’t PERFORMING it, now, is it?
So do your part. You can click here to read the entire play!
—
And there you have, it, fair readers…a little glimpse into my research into David’s years in drama school at the RSAMD. And believe me, this is only a small glimpse into the vault of the research I’ve done.
I hope you’ve enjoyed it!
Well, well, well... couldn't David pull rank and say he was a "McDonald?"
Wow, Much Ado About Burgers! Your research skills are amazing and reading about the many things you’ve unearthed is like recovering buried treasures from the distant past! I hope one day soon David Tennant sits down with you and tells you everything you want to know about his illustrious and varied career! And then you share it with us!