September 2015 - The Diary

No rest for the wicked! The day after finishing the Fringe it was back on the train to Leeds and another excellent corporate roleplay for COLOPLAST UK with the usual gang, this time staying at the Art Deco Queens Hotel, which was lovely! Again the event was well attended and important practical experience for the nursing staff who participated (see photo below).

Next up was another Feature Film appearance in THE BOLANDER GREEN SOCIETY, a mockumentary movie set in The Highlands, directed by Andy Sherlow. I play Profesor Murdock in the film which is about four student scientists who travel north to undertake a series of experiments, inspired by a group from the 1970s who accomplished great advances within the field.

I had a really enjoyable two days on this shoot in and around Glasgow University, (pictured above and below) the first time I'd filmed there since shooting scenes for Charlie Sheen's POSTMORTEM in 1997.Then it was back to London and another audition as well as a fab COLOPLAST UK gig in Chelsea.


Back to Glasgow for more auditions and then it was back into 'pirate mode' for more RPM gigs in Glasgow and Middlesborough with CAPTAIN MORGAN, which were great fun again.

August 2015 - The Diary

August in Scotland means only one thing, The Edinburgh Fringe Festival and delighted to bring 'Letters To Aberlour' to the beautiful Central Halls in West Tollcross. We ran for the entire Festival and flyered by day in full Scottish WW1 costume, suffering heat exhaustion, pouring rain and blistered feet in disintegrating army boots but it was worthwhile as our audiences, although small, were wonderfully encouraging as was the reaction to our publicity campaign on the hard cobbles of the Royal Mile! The photos on this page were taken by the brilliant Paul Henni, who photographed the show as well.

This was my third Fringe, having performed 'Glasgow Hard Tickets' in 1995 and 'Singin I'm No A Billy I'm A Tim' in 2005 at The Gilded Ballooon. 'Hard Tickets' won the Scotsman Fringe First Award and 'Billy&Tim' went on to tour for a decade and filled arenas, so I have a decent pedigree for choosing shows to take to Edinburgh!

Our early reviews were mixed but all praised the level of acting from our lovely and hard-working cast. We streamlined the script, cut scenes and lighting and sound effects and things ran much smoother and the show improved greatly. Really pleased with the reaction and received this nice review as well, from the Edinburgh Spotlight "Simon Weir’s stirring and emotionally-aware Canon Jenks appears on and off through the whole play, which helps to maintain and develop his character and place within the story." 

A huge thanks to the staff of The Central Halls and The Just Festival for making us so welcome and the venue was beautiful, certainly in comparison to previous Fringe venues! Received a great 4 star review from All Edinburgh Theatre with a nice mention in despatches " The dilemmas of the situation are crystallised by the conflicted character of Canon Jenks, whose dismay at how his inculcation of Christian duty has led to so many deaths is well conveyed by the hugely impressive and versatile Simon Weir."

The month was rounded off by more commercial castings in between shows and we were honoured to be joined onstage by the great-grandson of Benjamin Pritchard, who I play in Letters To Aberlour and who had travelled from New Zealand to catch the show. This was my personal highlight of this whole festival and really brought home to us all just how important this play is and that these forgotten soldiers voices deserve to be heard. Chris is photographed (wearing hat!) with the cast below!

A tough but rewarding month and another Edinburgh Fringe Festival under the belt. Think it will be another decade before I venture back! And nice to finish on a high with a lovely review as well!

Letters To Aberlour - Latest Review!

« A Bohemians’ Rhapsody

EDFRINGE 15 | REVIEWS

Letters to Aberlour

August 29, 2015 | By Hugh Simpson | Reply

✭✭✭✭✩     Effectively affecting

Just Festival at Central Hall (Venue 295a): Fri 7 – Mon 31 Aug 2015

Letters To Aberlour stands out from many of the recent depictions of the horrors of the First World War by virtue of its stately staging and simple humanity.

Jonathan Urquhart’s play, presented by New Strides Theatre at Central Hall in the Just Festival, tells an all-encompassing story by focusing on one corner of Speyside.

Letters To Aberlour. Photo by and copyright of Paul Henni.

Aberlour children’s charity began with a huge orphanage in Charlestown of Aberlour itself. Over 200 of its ‘old boys’ enlisted in the First World War and at least 60 of them died, with many of the others never really recovering.

In the absence of anyone else to write to, and feeling those at the orphanage to be their family, many of them sent letters home to Aberlour from the front, and these letters form the basis of the narrative.

As a framing device, there is a visit to the closing of the original orphanage in the 1960s by Arthur Mylam, one of the many whose sense of duty instilled in him by his upbringing caused him to enlist.

Within this framework comes the story of a large number of characters; it is some time before it is clear that there are only five in the cast, so effective are the transformations between parts. The structure of many short scenes becomes slightly obstructive, but the changes between them are swiftly and carefully handled.

There seems to have been pruning of the text at some point; the play is considerably shorter than listed in the Fringe programme, and since it was first mounted last year, this can only be because some material has been removed. Certainly the jump from 1915 to the end of the war is abrupt after what has gone before. This is not necessarily a bad thing; in this form, there is a tautness and tension to Ruth Urquhart’s direction that holds the audience’s attention extremely well.

impressive and versatile

The archive material has been cleverly inserted into an overarching structure that provokes questions without supplying easy answers. Only a rather artificial discussion about the charity’s subsequent use of smaller homes seems out of place. Otherwise, the dilemmas of the situation are crystallised by the conflicted character of Canon Jenks, whose dismay at how his inculcation of Christian duty has led to so many deaths is well conveyed by the hugely impressive and versatile Simon Weir.

Letters To Aberlour. Photo by and copyright of Paul Henni.

Patrick Capaloff Fowler’s energetic, physical performance is also worthy of comment, while Anthony Bentley’s quiet grace as Arthur Mylam contains many shades of character. He is also adept at changing from a much younger to an older man in the blink of an eye. Jonathan Durie and Julia Jack also acquit themselves well in a variety of roles.

Too often depictions of these events try to convey their unprecedented scale in an epic sweep that simply makes it difficult to comprehend, and accordingly too easy to dismiss. Here, the local focus gives it a humanity and a focus that sticks in the mind. The decision to keep any actual fighting offstage is a good one; instead what we see are the results, expressed in devastating loss, cruel irony, and crippling regret.

There are political and human points made, but they rise naturally out of the narrative rather than being overlaid on it. This gives the storytelling a spare, limpid quality that makes it convincing.

Running time 1 hour 25 minutes (no interval)
Just Festival at Central Hall (Venue 295a), 2 West Tollcross, EH3 9BP
Friday 7 – Monday 31 Aug 2015

July 2015 - The Diary

July began with more fun corporate work with 'PETER VARDY' back in Perth and another 'Live Quiz Show' hosted by the ubiquitous 'Fun-Time Freddie' which again went down well and delighted to land more work in this field with a fantastic client at the picturesque surroundings of the Millershall Hotel.

Then another photo shoot with Calum Connolly in Edinburgh followed by another voice over for 'THE CLAIMS EQUILIBRIUM CLUB' and 'HAMILTON PARK RACECOURSE' and 'GLASGOW PRESTICK AIRPORT' for Radio Clyde and Westsound. A busy month continued with the shooting of my promo trailer for Fraser Coull's webseries 'COPS AND MONSTERS' in which I play the head of the PITS Team and looking forward to shooting the series later this year.

Photo courtesy of Dougie Coull. Next up was an audition in London for a great US advert and a huge journey there and back in 24 hours in order to make it to Edinburgh in time for the start of rehearsals for our Fringe Festival run of 'LETTERS TO ABERLOUR' at The Central Halls, Tollcross. An exhausting but varied month and now looking forward to August and my third Edinburgh Fringe since we opened 'GLASGOW HARD TICKETS' there in 1995.

June 2015 - The Diary

Yet another mixed bag of a month, with radio, theatre, film and television work as well as finally getting new headshots! Thanks to Calum Connelly for the photo below! June began with four voice-overs for Hamilton Park Racecourse at Radio Clyde, followed by a rehearsal day for our Edinburgh show, Letters To Aberlour and great to catch up with the old team from last year's Scottish tour.

Really looking forward to bringing the show to the Fringe in August and tickets are selling well already...a good sign! Book your tickets for the run here:
https://edinburghfestival.list.co.uk/event/466204-letters-to-aberlour/

I made a surprise appearance on Ch4's Sunday Brunch with an airing of the OK SOCIAL CLUB's video for 'Walkie Talkie', followed the next week by a call from STV Glasgow to take part in a mini documentary on my old football club for The Riverside Show.

A great footballing month for me continued with the latest Scotland Writers FC international match with Italy at Spartans FC ground in Edinburgh and an unexpected( by all except for us!) 2-1 victory! You can read a full match report here Scotland V Italy A wonderful occasion and a fantastic match played in great spirit by both sides, and a lovely feeling to beat the current Writers World Champions!

Back to corporate live work in London with Coloplast UK and again really enjoyed working with a fantastic group of actors on a really worthy project and all of the participants seemed to appreciate our work, in the lovely surroundings of the Pestana Chelsea Bridge Hotel! Photo of our cast below by Theresa Lunniss on Facebook.

Teamed-up once again with Fraser Coull to shoot a promo film for our Edinburgh run in various locations around Glasgow. The photo below is of our last schools trip to Ednam Primary as 'Benjamin Pritchard' which seemed to keep the troops entertained!

We shot the promo film for 'Letters To Aberlour' in monsoon conditions around various excellent locations in Govan and Queens Park, Glasgow and really looking forward to seeing the finished film. Then another audition for a mockumentary film, more of which next month!

More headshots done with the talented Calum Connelly in Edinburgh, the best of which I will post next month. Back to Glasgow and had great fun shooting another corporate video for 'Peter Vardy'. Finally rounded off this month with the role of Vinny in the Feature Film, Starcache with another fab cast and

crew, directed by Douglas Sannachan. Squeezed in two days of filming at the end of June and nice to be reunited with old friends once again on this job. This film has been shooting for two years and I was delighted to eventually land a great comedic role in it's final days of shooting. The photo below is by the lovely Ruth Anne Hawkins, with whom I recently worked on Cleek, stepping in at the last moment to adorn my neck with an excellent tattoo!

Another really varied month of acting work and more gigs booked in for July, August and September already, so it is shaping up to be a great year and personally, I'm having a ball playing all of these different parts. Maybe turning 42 wasn't so bad after all!

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Delighted to announce that I shall be playing PITS Boss Norris Fletcher in Fraser Coull's Cops And Monsters web series later this summer, with a talented young cast and some hoary old pro's such as myself..! First costume fitting today (see below).

May 2015 - The Diary

May had everything! Auditions, voice work, corporate filming and live appearances, with hundreds of miles of travel and the promise of more work in the future. A busy month began with more CAPTAIN MORGAN live appearances around Scotland's bars and clubs, with gigs in Ayr, Glasgow, Dunfermline, Coatbridge and Dundee, followed by my 42nd birthday! Delighted to land a role in the feature film 'STARCACHE' directed by former 'Gregory's Girl' star Douglas Sannachan and filming this in June & July 2015, more of which later.

Then off to Leeds for another excellent COLOPLAST UK Roleplay job and really enjoying this line of work and the great practical experience it gives the nurses in attendance. Looking forward to more gigs in London in September. I was cast in another corporate video for the TUC with Theatre& which meant another trip to Yorkshire and filming in Huddersfield. Really nice cast and crew and look forward to hopefully working with them again in the near future.

Back to Glasgow for an audition for a US Feature Film and live appearances with RPM before more voice work on commercials for Hamilton Food Festival,UCI Mountain Bike World Cup and Fan Duel.
The photo below comes from our STUC Corporate shoot in Yorkshire, with cast mates Julie & Kash.

This was followed by another audition for a huge television series, fingers crossed for this one! Just exciting even to be seen for this, hopefully more of which later. Managed to catch David Carswell's 'Hatches, Matches & Dispatches' and Peter McDougall's 'My Brother's Suit' at Oran Mor and Paul Moore's 'Lynching' at The Shed this month and catch up with old pals before heading off to lovely Millport for a Bank Holiday trip and a wee recce for possible locations for a feature film I have written. Last up was a final promo gig in Edinburgh for RPM as the inimitable 'Sir Henry Morgan'. Good month of work and pleased with my progress this year thus far.