A Kick Up The Arts with Nicola Meighan
A Scottish Arts & Culture Podcast with Nicola Meighan
A Kick Up The Arts with Nicola Meighan
30 years of Grid Iron Theatre / Mayflies
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As we charge headlong into a month of madness at the Edinburgh Festivals, I’m joined by Scottish theatre revolutionaries Grid Iron to chat about their Fringe adaptation of Andrew O’Hagan’s Mayflies; and about their 30 years - and counting - of bringing brilliant drama to our stages, and beyond…
When Andrew launched Mayflies back in 2020, the novel’s tale of friendship, masculinity, youth, getting older and mortality - played out to a glorious 80s indie soundtrack - floored so many of us; as did Andrea Gibb’s TV adaptation, with Tony Curran and Martin Compston in the starring roles, as Tully, and Jimmy - aka Noodles…
We meet them as young men in Ayrshire, and then again in later life, faced with a devastating diagnosis - and an impossible choice…
As well as raising the roof in venues with shows like June Carter Cash - in cahoots with the National Theatre of Scotland - Grid Iron’s world-renowned site-specific theatre has included underground promenade trips like The Bloody Chamber, while their earlier reflection on young men, friendship and 1980s Ayrshire - Decky Does A Bronco - started life in a Paisley park…
Mayflies is being staged in a converted warehouse, Brown’s of Leith - as adapted and directed by Ben Harrison, produced by Jude Doherty, and soundtracked by the legendary DPJ, aka David Paul Jones.
I caught up with Ben, and Jude, to reflect on Mayflies, and three decades of Grid Iron…