The cast has been unveiled for this week’s world premier of Freckle, a compelling play about the limits of love at the Theatre Royal Dumfries.
Belle Jones ( Main Image) and Tim Barrow have taken on the special challenge presented by the Play, Poet and a Pastry series – to be ready to go on stage after just two rehearsals. The performance takes place in the studio at the Dumfries Theatre Royal on Friday, 26 January.
The initiative has gone down well with audiences, giving them the chance to see new work, performed by a high quality cast and all with a sense of freshness and immediacy.
Tim was born in Edinburgh, and brought up between Australia and Scotland. He has an enviable track record in the theatre and is also a playwright whose work has been staged across the UK.
He also works both sides of the camera, having written, produced and starred in The Inheritance – the award-winning Scottish road movie directed by Charles-Henri Belleville. After more success with The Space Between Tim is now working on a third movie called Riptide which will be released this year. He has also appeared in a variety of TV shows including Taggart.
Belle trained at the RSAMD (Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama) and won the Percival Steeds Prize for Spoken Word and the Norah Cooper Mulligan Award for Verse Speaking.
A performer on stage, screen and radio, she has appeared in Outlander and Rebus as well as in BBC Radio 4 productions of May There Always Be Sunshine and 44 Scotland Street. Her play Shame ran as part of the Assembly’s curated programme at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2017 and was shortlisted for the Scottish Arts Club Award.
Freckle, by Giles Conisbee from Pitlochry, is a thought-provoking exploration of a couple’s attempt to overcome a fatal mistake and its devastating repercussions.
Married, mortgaged and model parents, Stevie and Aoife’s world is now awash with guilt, pain and regret. As the gulf between them widens, reaching out to each other and bridging the chasm seems harder than simply slipping into the abyss.
Ali Anderson-Dyer, Director and co-founder of Bunbury Banter, said: “Freckle is a really powerful play – it poses the terrifying question: is there a limit to love and should there be?
“A Play, A Poet and A Pastry is so exciting because it shares new work in a social and accessible way. There are just two rehearsals and a single performance – and that’s followed by poetic response to the work.
“All this is then followed by a discussion in the theatre’s studio over locally baked pastries which are, would you believe, also inspired by the play.”
The poet for the third of the four Play, Poet and Pastry events is police officer turned poet JoAnne McKay, a past winner of the Dumfries poetry slam.
A Play, A Poet and A Pastry has been devised by Dumfries and Galloway-based Bunbury Banter Theatre Company to bring high quality professional theatre and poetry to audiences in south-west Scotland.
Bunbury Banter are specialists in new and experimental theatre and have recently produced Blackout to much acclaim, worked with the National Theatre of Scotland on the Five-Minute Festival, and a web-based audio production called Mortar which starred Timothy West, Prunella Scales and Nichola McAuliffe.
A Play, A Poet & A Pastry involves the semi-staging of new plays. It is supported by the Holywood Trust, DGU’s Regional Arts Fund and Dumfries and Galloway Arts Live. The pastries are provided by the Marchbank Bakery.
