THE
BLACKWATER BRIDE
A
Dramatic Storytelling Performance at Belper Arts Festival
Sunday May 4th.
2014 19.30 Tickets £7 / £5
Tickets via: http://www.belperartsfestival.org/THEATREEvents.php
Tickets via: http://www.belperartsfestival.org/THEATREEvents.php
A
Victorian Gothic mystery tale in the tradition of Conan Doyle &
Robert Louis Stevenson – brought to the stage as an epic one-man
drama by master storyteller & playwright Marty Ross!
Over
the last few years, Scottish (but Nottingham-based) storyteller Marty
Ross has established himself with a series of shows combining his
mastery of the traditional art of live storytelling with a
playwright's sense of theatre, in dramatisations of Thomas Hardy &
classic ghost stories for Chilwell Arts Theatre, in performances of
his own stories rooted in Scots folklore, as well as with 21st.
Century Poe, his 5 star
sell-out at this year's Edinburgh Fringe and London Horror Festivals,
updating three classic Poe tales to our times and his own home town
of Glasgow. But now comes his most ambitious show yet.
Ross
has a parallel career as a playwright, particularly with radio drama
for the BBC, including his series of Scottish Gothic tales The Darker
Side Of The Border, the popular serials Catch My Breath & Ghost
Zone and single dramas including 2012's Rough Magick, 2013's Lady
Macbeth of Mtsensk & 2014's forthcoming The Dead Of Fenwick Moor.
He has also written Doctor Who audio dramas, an award-nominated Dark
Shadows drama and last year had Redder Than Roses: A Glimpse Of Mary,
Queen Of Scots commissioned by The Buxton Festival. This new show,
The Blackwater Bride, reworks for solo-storyteller format the first
play he ever had produced, a tale close to his heart, rooted in the
Victorian-Gothic atmosphere and backstreet folklore of his native
Glasgow.
The
Blackwater Bride begins when a young woman comes to Glasgow to
investigate the mysterious death of her father. A young policeman
helps her negotiate the great city's shadowier back streets – even
as his superior officer seems to have his own private reasons for
obstructing the investigation. The clues point towards the mysterious
figure of the Blackwater Bride, a ghostly figure of local folklore
who simply can't be real... or can she? What begins as a murder
mystery shades towards the eerier, more uncanny world of both Celtic
folklore and the 'gaslit Gothic' of tales like Jekyll & Hyde and
Dorian Gray, Sweeney Todd & The Woman In Black, Ross shifting
with chameleon fluidity, and Dickensian vividness, through a whole
cast of characters good and bad, male and female, mysterious and
dangerous, evoking a dramatic vision of the smoky, shadowy, bustling,
labyrinthine Victorian city. Where his previous Chilwell shows have
presented 'double bills' of shorter stories, here he presents a
single full-length story in two acts, in the grandest manner of
Celtic storytelling, where a single story would indeed often occupy a
whole evening (or several evenings, but he's not quite that ambitious
– yet!)
Reviews
of Ross' previous storytelling shows give a taste of the high octane
theatre a storytelling evening with Marty Ross offers:
“Ross
has a great aptitude for suspense and terror, and he hurls himself
into his tale with energy and passion, in words which ring with the
native Glasgow rhythm.”
- The Scotsman
“Visceral.
Marty Ross is a compelling narrator and onstage presence. … left
you thinking as well as reeling… Never less than compelling this
was theatre that kept you on edge... It is the utter conviction with
which Ross performs that draws you into his world. Immensely
entertaining – a fair ground ghost ride for the 21st Century.”
- Fringe Review
“Insanely
good storytelling. Ross is a master craftsman who never turns down
the pressure. The storytelling is utterly convincing.”
- Broadway Baby
