CHILLS IN CHILWELL AS SCOTTISH STORYTELLER RETURNS TO HIS ROOTS

The Passion Of Tam Shanter: Chilwell Arts Theatre, 7pm, Sunday 15^th November.

Tickets £15 / £12 concession

 

‘Spooky Season’ didn’t end with Halloween, not in Chilwell, as a prodigal storytelling son returns with his most dramatic show yet.

Scottish performance storyteller Marty Ross has been a significant pioneer in the transformation of this most ancient of all dramatic art forms into a vivid, immersive brand of contemporary theatre. But though Ross now principally performs on the Scottish Isle of Arran, where he lives, Ross’s performance career began in Nottingham, where he lived for 15 years, starting with performances with Nottingham Storytellers at the Trip to Jerusalem pub and then extending to a run of epic solo shows at Chilwell Arts Theatre. This November, he returns there for the first time in almost a decade with a spooky Scottish tale just ideal for a dark autumn evening: THE PASSION OF TAM SHANTER, which is on at CAT at 7pm on Sunday 15^th November.

As the title will suggest, the inspiration for this story lies with the celebrated ballad of Tam O’Shanter by Scottish bard Robert Burns. But where Burns’s tale of witchery in a ruined church has a tongue-in-cheek tone, Ross’s version of the story is radically different, updating it to a contemporary setting and treating the scary stuff much more seriously, to create a dark psychological thriller of illicit desire and terrifying consequences, more Stephen King than Haggis Supper: a creepy “Folk Horror” tale to get under your skin just as the nights turn cold.

Since last performing in the East Midlands, Ross has been busy not only as a performance storyteller but also as a dramatist, particularly for BBC Radio (Local Hero, still on BBC Sounds) and for Audible with originals like The Darkwater Bride & The Dead of Rannoch Moor, plus adaptations of Treasure Island, Arabian Nights, Three Musketeers, Sleeping Beauty, Moby-Dick and a trilogy of Dickens adaptations executive produced by Sam (Skyfall) Mendes. These have featured actors like Brian Cox, Ncuti Gatwa, Jessie Buckley, Helena Bonham Carter, David Morrisey, Stephen Fry, Daniel Kaluuya, Jack Lowden (next James Bond??), Mackenzie Crook, Toby Jones and Nicola Coughlan. But Ross is still at his best, perhaps, performing his own stories in his own distinctive theatrical fashion, an audience experience like no other.

Places can be reserved for the show on Sunday Nov 15^th at Chilwell Arts Theatre by contacting…. michael@chilwellartstheatre.co.uk or by phoning 07387 159982