21st CENTURY POE at Glasgow Southside Fringe 9 & 10 May

Just a quick note to correct a misprint in the Glasgow Southside Fringe brochure regarding the 21st CENTURY POE shows I'm doing next weekend as part of the fest at The Bungo on Glasgow's Nithsdale Road. The brochure says I'm doing FALLING FOR THE USHERS on both 9 & 10 May, but in fact I'm doing USHERS on Sat 9, but doing a DIFFERENT, equally stunning, show on Sunday 10 May, HEART SHAPED HOLE, the show that got me my best reviews when I did the show at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2013. Extra value: 2 nights, 2 shockers! I'll paste in the poster here, which has all the details, including how to book at www.brownpapertickets,com.

USHERS can be booked H E R E ! ! !

and HEART SHAPED HOLE can be booked H E R E ! ! !

BLOOD & STONE: Lullaby For A Vampire Countess this week at Lee Rosy's

Big event this week is my Walpurgisnacht show this Thursday 8pm at Lee Rosy's in Nottingham (downstairs, in the "crypt"!) Tickets are £4 / £3. I'm performing BLOOD AND STONE: LULLABY FOR A VAMPIRE COUNTESS, based on the true story of real life 'vampire' Elizabeth Bathory, history's most prolific serial killer who, according to legend, bathed in blood to preserve her beauty. So below I'll reprint my little essay on my 'relationship' with the Countess, which I originally wrote to accompany my audio drama version of the story, written for the Wireless Theatre Company and 3DHorrorFi and which was nominated for a 2012 Rondo Award. (You can download the audio drama version HERE!!!

THE COUNTESS & I.

We go back a long way together, Erzsebet Bathory and I. One of my earliest childhod memories is of a Saturday afternoon in the Govanhill area of Glasgow when I badgered my parents to let me spend my pocket money on a book I had just seen in a shop along the road: the novelisation of Hammer Films’ version of the Bathory story Countess Dracula. My Mum and Dad, to be fair, were less worried about my exposure to the horrors within those pages (I was already the kind of kid allowed to sit up in his Star Trek pyjamas to watch the late night horror film on TV), than concerned over the waste of money on a book surely unreadable to a child with his age still in single figures. (“Think of all the long words,” I remember my Mum saying.) But I persevered and soon had my hands on my very first ‘grown-up’ book, with its gorgeous front cover of a beautiful young Ingrid Pitt and its disturbing back cover image of a grotesquely aged Pitt shoved in her prison cell at the end of the film (which therefore ends just before BLOOD & STONE begins.) And within those covers I was introduced to at least a fictionalised version of the great lady, right at the absolute inception of my literary life. She has haunted me ever since.

How could she not? As someone who firmly believes that great horror is achieved when – and only when - horror and beauty ring out at the same instant (No beauty? Then I’m not interested.), this woman, simultaneously magnificent and beautiful and monstrous beyond conception, might stand as the sheerest embodiment of that aesthetic, less a commonplace serial killer (yawn...) than a kind of wondrous, terrible Goddess of death, like Kali or Medea, Hecate or Clytemnestra.

Throughout the rest of my childhood, a childhood blessed with the true writer’s ability to promiscuously mingle ‘fact’ and fantasy, the tenement building in Glasgow’s Cathcart Road which housed that newsagent’s shop became for me the home of Countess Bathory. I would look at the dusty upper windows of that tenement and visualise the Countess locked up in there – for it was the image of the imprisoned Countess of her latter years that truly haunted my imagination. (Likewise, the toy shop across the street where I bought a model kit of Doctor Jekyll turning into Mr. Hyde housed, in my imagination, that very laboratory somewhere in its back shop.)  

And so, inevitably, I dreamed of one day creating my own artistic, dramatic vision of the Countess. The basic plot of BLOOD & STONE was already at least half-formulated in my mind by my teenage years, but I dithered over getting it down on paper, fearful perhaps of doing justice to the great lady, but also at a loss to think who would produce such a grim, Gothic story. It hardly seemed material for the BBC or the Royal Court!

Then, when a backpacking trip around Austria saw me basing myself in Vienna, in a hotel room so cheap the window looked out on a romantic airshaft heaped with dead pigeons, I felt the Countess herself taking a hand in the matter. There’s no time to deal with this in BLOOD & STONE, but not all the Countess’s atrocities were committed in her Hungarian Castle. She also had a townhouse in Vienna, just behind the Imperial Court (signifying how highly ranked her family were in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy) and committed some of her crimes there. The monks on the other side of the street used to chuck pots across at her window when the screams of tortured girls disturbed their devotions – but never thought of reporting someone so important to the authorities. Vienna doesn’t publicise her its Bathory connection like it publicises Mozart, but after a bit of detective work at the Vienna police museum, I worked out her Vienna address and made my way there after dark one night.

The street is narrow, poorly lit and with houses that seem to lean towards one another across the street in Caligari fashion. The doorway that once been hers was large but drably painted and many of the floors above in a building now split into offices and apartments looked empty, derelict, buried in dust. I couldn’t help but picture her staring out of the uppermost windows, haunting the spot still. And, standing there, I happened to glance a few doors along to the window of a small record shop on the same block. Two big musicals were playing in Vienna that year: one of them, Elizabeth, portrayed the tragic 19^th. Century empress ‘Sissi’, Austria’s very own Princess Di. The other show was Tanz Der Vampyr, a musical based on Roman Polanski’s film Dance Of The Vampires (aka Fearless Vampire Killers). But the way the posters for the two shows were juxtaposed in the window, one above the other, meant that what I saw when I glanced that way was the dim lamp light falling across two words only:

                                    VAMPYR ELIZABETH

It was like a sign, direct from the ghost of the lady herself to my own imagination. I turned away, hurried back up the street towards the brighter lights and broader byways around the opera house. And I swear I could hear the moth-eaten folds of her gown hissing after me up the pavement, pursuing me all the way back to the grey shadows of that hotel room. That night I felt her crawling into my skull.

After that, I had to write something. The first form the idea took on paper was that of a stage play entitled Laundry, but this was a different piece from BLOOD & STONE: the bare bones of the plot were identical, but Laundry updated the story to modern Eastern Europe, both under and after Stalinism and was written in a surreal, absurdist style closer to Ionesco or Kafka or Durrenmatt than to a straightforward horror story. Inevitably, perhaps, no one knew what to do with a play so wilfully off-beat and peculiar so the script lay gathering dust, like the Countess’s ghost up behind those Vienna windows.

But still I couldn’t let go of her; or she wouldn’t let go of me. The idea came to me to take the story back to what it had been in the first place: a pure no-bullshit gothic horror story, 17^th. Century castle setting and all. When I took up professional storytelling, I performed a rough-and-ready 25 minute version of Blood And Stone during one of my regular stints with the Storytellers Of Nottingham in Nottingham’s haunted Trip To Jerusalem pub. It worked well, but seemed too big and intense for that tiny venue and limited slot, so I thought about developing it further as a full length piece in its own right. Meanwhile, I pitched it tentatively to BBC Scotland as a radio play, but they took understandable fright at the thought of something so dark and nasty coming on straight after The Archers. Then Mariele Runacre Temple, who’d already produced another play of mine, Medusa On The Beach, for her Wireless Theatre Company dropped me a line about a new audio drama company being set up specially to focus on horror drama. And I knew in an instant that the ghost which had trailed me along the Vienna streets that night, which had maybe been trailing me all the way from that Glasgow street of my childhood, had found a home.

BLOOD & STONE was recorded in a spooky Norfolk church and then released, through 3D Horror Fi, Wireless Theatre Company, Amazon Audible, iTunes etc. and was very well received, ultimately earning a 2012 Rondo award nomination. But the tight hold the Countess had taken of me meant it wasn’t enough to just write a script and let others perform it – that dream of a longer storytelling version offered me the chance to bring to fruition my own inner Countess, to fully channel the way, years before, I’d felt her spirit creeping into me, whether in the streets of Glasgow or Vienna. Storytelling, when it’s really going full tilt, has an almost Shamanic quality… one feels the characters are passing through one, seizing hold of one, like spirits, like you’re a medium, an intermediary, between your audience and the world of the dead. And, God help me, as I rehearse Blood And Stone, day and out, as I twist mind and voice and body into the Countess’ stark contours, it really feels as if there’s more than my imagination at work, as if something/someone who followed me home, skirts a-rustle that night in Vienna is slipping on my skin and bones like a ragged ballgown, a pair of dark gloves, a tragic mask for a tragic (anti) heroine…..

VAMPIRES IN THE VAULT - my 2015 Edinburgh Fringe show

Starting to prepare my storytelling show for this year's Edinburgh Fringe. Again, it's at the Vault @ Paradise Green, where I performed my 21st. Century Poe shows at the last couple of Fringes. The show is ALREADY BOOKING at Edfringe Website H E R E ! ! !

This year, I'm doing, as the title makes fairly obvious, two vampire stories, alternating them between Saturday 8th and Sat 15th August, 17.55 every day.

On Saturday 8, Monday 10, Wednesday 12, Friday 14 August, I'm performing THE GORBALS VAMPIRE  in which I use the true story of how some kids on Glasgow's south side got the idea that there was a vampire with steel teeth haunting Glasgow's Southern Necropolis - using this as the leaping off point for a very gritty horror story of innocence lost.

Then on Sunday 9, Tuesday 11, Thursday 13 and Saturday 15 August, I'm performing BLOOD AND STONE: LULLABY FOR A VAMPIRE COUNTESS, in which I use another real life 'vampire' story as a leaping off point for a dark fictional drama. The real life story in this case is the infamous one of Elizabeth Bathory, the 17th century Hungarian bloody Countess, who bathed in human blood to maintain her beauty. The true story ended with the Countess being sealed up within a room in her castle. My story imagines a sequel to this true story... In which someone is seemingly naive enough to let the Countess out!

I'm also performing BLOOD & STONE at Lee Rosy's in Nottingham on April 30 (Walpurgisnacht!) and at Belper Arts Festival on May 23rd. My audio drama version, nominated for a 2012 Rondo Award, is available from the Wireless Theatre Company website HERE

21st. CENTURY POE comes home... to Glasgow's Southside Fringe!

AT LAST! After all this time performing my storytelling shows everywhere from the Edinburgh Fringe to the London Horror Festival, I'm finally getting to take a couple of my 21st. Century Poe shows to my own neighbourhood, the centre of my spiritual universe, namely Glasgow's south side. I'll paste in below the details:

21st. CENTURY POE

9^th May: FALLING FOR THE USHERS 10^th. May: HEART SHAPED HOLE

Southside Fringe 2015. The Bungo, Nithsdale Road, Glasgow.

8pm 9 & 10^th. May Tickets £7 / £6

Tickets for FALLING FOR THE USHERS: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/1391795

Tickets for HEART SHAPED HOLE:

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/1391806

Marty Ross (BBC Radio horror; Doctor Who audio) drags Edgar Allan kicking & screaming into the modern world in a horror double bill of storytelling performances!

"True! - nervous - very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?"

In virtually all the greatest chillers of Edgar Allan Poe, the same note is struck straightaway: an isolated, tormented narrator wants – needs! – to tell us of the strange and terrible experiences he has undergone. They are ideally suited, therefore, to contemporary theatre’s great comeback kid, the most ancient and suddenly most modern form of narrative theatre: live storytelling.

As a theatrical storyteller with a flair for the Gothic and macabre - as reflected in his parallel career as playwright for the likes of BBC radio’s “Marvellously chilling” (Guardian) Darker Side Of The Border, Ghost Zone & Catch My Breath, as well as Moyamensing, his 2014 Halloween show for Radio Scotland, plus Doctor Who and award-nominated Dark Shadows audio drama - Marty Ross has seized upon the dramatic potential of Poe’s tales. But as a storytelling ‘modernist’ keen to shift this resurgent form away from once-upon-a-time-in-a-land-far-away ‘folkiness’, he has no intention of presenting Poe’s stories as period pieces: rather he has radically updated them to our era, both in plot & language – while shifting the setting to his native Glasgow: and now after having performed them to sell-out houses and five star reviews everywhere from the Edinburgh Fringe to the London Horror Festival, he brings his distinctly Glaswegian horror aesthetic home to Glasgow's south side for this year's Southside Fringe.

In line with this distinctive approach, FALLING FOR THE USHERS (Saturday 9^th May) shifts Poe’s incestuous siblings from their misty Gothic manor to the world of Damien Hirst / Chapman Bros.– type contemporary art. But when an old friend from Glasgow School of Art shows up, the scene is set for a denoument as dark and tragic as that of the original story. On Sunday 10^th. May, HEART SHAPED HOLE sets Poe’s Tell Tale Heart beating against a background of Glasgow tower block drug dealing, as young junkie on the make Stanley tries to murder his way to power, but can't escape that strange pounding in his head.... Perverse passions, substance abuse, macabre humour, murderous violence… shift Poe from his olde worlde settings to our times and one is close to the world of David Lynch, William Burroughs, even Irvine Welsh.

Ross' performances are far removed from the comfy-chair raconteur-ing of too many people’s clichés of live storytelling. Ross’s performance style is in-your-face, expressionist, intensely physical… more Theatre of Cruelty than Jackanory. Those who have managed to overlook live storytelling till now have been ‘astonished’ at the theatrical intensity of his performances, as attested by the reviews below:

On FALLING FOR THE USHERS:

“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... an accomplished piece of work which builds towards a chilling conclusion.” – The Scotsman - review by Claire Smith

“…poetically re-worked ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ manages, in its modernisation, to preserve and revere the original, even intensifying its impact. Marty Ross delivers a bewitchingly good story that leaves a haunting reminder long after the lights have gone down.” – 3 weeks: Review By Katharine Wootton

On HEART SHAPED HOLE:

“An insanely good piece of storytelling... Ross is a master craftsman who never turns down the pressure, painting vile pictures and weaving a grotesque spell. The tone is foul and relentless - Trainspotting meets Gothic horror…. Ross’ violently impressive performance make this a heart-pounding triumph which demands appreciation.” – Broadway Baby: Review by Gwen Sims-Williams

“This was visceral. Marty Ross is a compelling narrator and onstage presence. … left you thinking as well as reeling… This was theatre that kept you on edge and occasionally threatened to send you off it. As a raconteur it is the utter conviction with which Ross performs that… draws you into his world. An immensely entertaining ride that scared and shocked in equal measure – a fair ground ghost ride for the 21st Century…” – .Fringe Review: Reviewed by Donald C Stewart

BLOOD AND STONE: Lullaby For A Vampire Countess - My Walpurgisnacht show at Lee Rosy's Tea Shop

Here's the press release for my next storytelling show, which is at Lee Rosy's Tea Shop in Nottingham on April 30th: WALPURGISNACHT!

Here's the details:

BLOOD AND STONE: LULLABY FOR A VAMPIRE COUNTESS
A Dramatic Performance by Marty Ross
April 30th. 8pm, Lee Rosy's Tea Shop, 17 Broad Street, Nottingham NG1 3AJ. Tickets £4 / £3 Concession. Reservations: 07989 746641.

Celebrate Walpurgisnacht with a trip to a Hungarian castle where history's most infamous real life 'vampire' is imprisoned, all via the basement of Lee Rosy's Tea Shop!

Halloween? Oh yeah, we've all heard about that. But what about the other night of the year when dark forces walk? Any reader of Bram Stoker will be aware of the Mittel-European tradition of Walpurgisnacht, but conspicuously the UK fails to celebrate it: well, that's all going to change this year in Nottingham, as acclaimed storyteller and playwright Marty Ross returns to Lee Rosy's after his Edgar Allan Poe show last Halloween: his new show an appropriately Gothic vampire tale.

The year is 1610: Hungary’s real life ‘vampire’ countess is imprisoned in her castle, the most prolific serial killer in history. But what if a servant were naïve enough to be talked into setting her free?

It’s one of history’s great horror stories – the Countess who bathed in blood to preserve her beauty. It has inspired horror films from Hammer’s ‘Countess Dracula’ to recent efforts starring Julie Delpy and Anna Friel. Those accounts have focused upon the Countess’ gory heyday, but the emphasis in Marty Ross’ storytelling show is on the aftermath… the ageing Countess punished by being locked for years in a lightless chamber in her castle, her hunger fierce as ever. Blood And Stone imagines that hunger being turned loose on the world once again.

Those who have seen Marty Ross' previous performances at Lee Rosy's, or at Chilwell Arts Theatre, or No. 28 in Belper... or at the Edinburgh Fringe (where this show is headed) or the London Horror Festival (where this show was successfully performed in 2013) will know his storyteller’s ability to shape-shift through the forms and voices of a myriad of strange characters, male and female. Well established as a playwright, particularly with dark drama for BBC radio (Ghost Zone, Catch My Breath, Darker Side Of The Border), plus Doctor Who & award-nominated Dark Shadows audio drama– as well as the audio drama version of Blood And Stone, nominated for a 2012 Rondo Award (horror fandom’s Oscars) - as a storyteller he is a whole dramatis personae in himself, a key figure in the current revival of this oldest – and yet suddenly most modern - of theatrical forms.

As Broadway Baby said of his show 21^st. Century Poe, “Ross is a master craftsman who never turns down the pressure, painting vile pictures and weaving a grotesque spell over his listeners… Certain images were so repulsive that people in the front row were noticeably squirming”. Using not just powerful words, but mime and gesture indebted to the likes of German Expressionism, Ross’ storytelling is more Theatre Of Cruelty than Book At Bedtime, creating vivid on-stage images, even as he projects more scarifying images still into the audience’s imaginations… which is where the really scary stuff always happens….

Reviews for Ross’ previous shows:

“Insanely good storytelling… a master craftsman who never turns down the pressure… violently impressive….” – Broadway Baby *****

“Ross has a great aptitude for suspense and terror… chilling.” – The Scotsman

“Visceral. A compelling narrator and onstage presence. … left you thinking as well as reeling… theatre that kept you on edge… an immensely entertaining ride that scared and shocked in equal measure – a fair ground ghost ride for the 21st Century….” – Fringe Review 

FALLING FOR THE USHERS returns to No. 28, Belper

Big thing this week is the return to Number Twenty Eight Belper of 21st. CENTURY POE: FALLING FOR THE USHERS this coming Saturday, February 28th. I'll paste in the details below...

21^st. CENTURY POE: FALLING FOR THE USHERS

No. 28 Belper, Market Square, Belper. Saturday 28^th. February 2015. 7.30 pm.

Tickets £7 / £5 concession.

Scottish storyteller & playwright Marty Ross (BBC Radio horror; Doctor Who audio) drags The Fall Of The House Of Usher kicking & screaming into the modern world, in a show already a hit at the Edinburgh Fringe & London Horror Festivals!

Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall Of The House Of Usher is long-established as a classic horror tale, but Marty Ross is a ‘modernist’ on the live storytelling scene, keen to rescue this resurgent form from backward looking quaintness. Thus, in his version, Falling For The Ushers, haunted twins Roderick and Madeline Usher have left behind the misty Gothic manor of the original story to become superstars of Glasgow's contemporary art world, thanks to their macabre conceptual installations in the manner of Damien Hirst and the Chapman Bros. But when Madeline’s old art school admirer Ed shows up, their tragic downfall is as inescapable as ever. And Marty Ross's unique performing style, combining evocative language with expressionistic mime and gesture, makes full-blown theatre out of the story as he embodies a whole cast list of larger than life characters.

FALLING FOR THE USHERS has already been a hit at the Edinburgh Fringe and London Horror Festivals, as testified by the reviews it received:

“Insanely good storytelling… a master craftsman who never turns down the pressure… Ross’ violently impressive performance make this a heart-pounding triumph… Trainspotting meets gothic horror….” – Broadway Baby *****

“…What Marty Ross does with literature’s most mystical and macabre works is make them sing with new energy and beguile an audience all over again…. poetically re-worked ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ manages, in its modernisation, to preserve and revere the original, even intensifying its impact… a bewitchingly good story that leaves a haunting reminder long after the lights have gone down.” - 3 Weeks ****

“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 Glasgow rhythm. An accomplished piece of work… a chilling conclusion.” – The Scotsman

“Visceral. A compelling narrator and onstage presence. … left you thinking as well as reeling… theatre that kept you on edge… an immensely entertaining ride that scared and shocked in equal measure – a fair ground ghost ride for the 21st Century….” – Fringe Review

Well established as a playwright, particularly with dark drama for BBC radio (Ghost Zone, Catch My Breath, Darker Side Of The Border, Rough Magick & Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk; another Poe show, Moyamensing, is to be BBC Radio Scotland's big Halloween show this year, with another new play, The Dead Of Fenwick Moor, to be broadcast in the new year), plus Doctor Who & award-nominated Dark Shadows audio drama, as well as Blood And Stone, nominated for a 2012 Rondo Award (horror fandom’s Oscars), Ross also regularly performs as a live storyteller, particularly in Scotland, his native country, and in the East Midlands, where he currently lives, this year having already seen him perform The Strange Tale Of The Glasgow Golem & Falling For The Ushers in Nottingham. Previously in Belper he has performed Falling For The Ushers & The Blackwater Bride. Two plays of his have been commissioned for the last two Buxton Festivals – Redder Than Roses: A Glimpse Of Mary, Queen Of Scots & The Woman On The Bridge. A new play has been commissioned by Cromford Mill for premiere in October of this year. 

FALLING FOR THE USHERS: My show for Nottingham LIGHT NIGHT!

Just posting details of FALLING FOR THE USHERS, the storytelling show I'm performing for Nottingham Light Night at Nottingham Central Library on Fri Feb 6th.

21^st. CENTURY POE: FALLING FOR THE USHERS

Nottingham Central Library, Light Night, February 6th, 7.30pm. Tickets £2.50. To book: 0115-915-2825 or email:

enquiryline@nottinghamcity.gov.uk

Scottish storyteller & playwright Marty Ross (BBC Radio horror; Doctor Who audio) drags The Fall Of The House Of Usher kicking & screaming into the modern world, in a show already a hit at the Edinburgh Fringe & London Horror Festivals!

Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall Of The House Of Usher is long-established as a classic horror tale, but Marty Ross is a ‘modernist’ on the live storytelling scene, keen to rescue this resurgent form from backward looking quaintness. Thus, in his version, Falling For The Ushers, haunted twins Roderick and Madeline Usher have left behind the misty Gothic manor of the original story to become superstars of Glasgow's contemporary art world, thanks to their macabre conceptual installations in the manner of Damien Hirst and the Chapman Bros. But when Madeline’s old art school admirer Ed shows up, their tragic downfall is as inescapable as ever. And Marty Ross's unique performing style, combining evocative language with expressionistic mime and gesture, makes full-blown theatre out of the story as he embodies a whole cast list of larger than life characters.

FALLING FOR THE USHERS has already been a hit at the Edinburgh Fringe and London Horror Festivals, as testified by the reviews it received:

“Insanely good storytelling… a master craftsman who never turns down the pressure… Ross’ violently impressive performance make this a heart-pounding triumph… Trainspotting meets gothic horror….” – Broadway Baby *****

“…What Marty Ross does with literature’s most mystical and macabre works is make them sing with new energy and beguile an audience all over again…. poetically re-worked ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ manages, in its modernisation, to preserve and revere the original, even intensifying its impact… a bewitchingly good story that leaves a haunting reminder long after the lights have gone down.” - 3 Weeks ****

“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 Glasgow rhythm. An accomplished piece of work… a chilling conclusion.” – The Scotsman

“Visceral. A compelling narrator and onstage presence. … left you thinking as well as reeling… theatre that kept you on edge… an immensely entertaining ride that scared and shocked in equal measure – a fair ground ghost ride for the 21st Century….” – Fringe Review

Well established as a playwright, particularly with dark drama for BBC radio (Ghost Zone, Catch My Breath, Darker Side Of The Border, Rough Magick & Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk; another Poe show, Moyamensing, BBC Radio Scotland's 2014 Halloween show this year, as well as 2014's The Dead Of Fenwick Moor, plus Doctor Who & award-nominated Dark Shadows audio drama, as well as Blood And Stone, nominated for a 2012 Rondo Award (horror fandom’s Oscars), Ross also regularly performs as a live storyteller, particularly in Scotland, his native country, and in the East Midlands, where he currently lives, this year having already seen him perform his latest show The Strange Tale Of The Glasgow Golem at Chilwell Arts Theatre, Nottingham. Two plays of his have been commissioned for the last two Buxton Festivals – Redder Than Roses: A Glimpse Of Mary, Queen Of Scots & The Woman On The Bridge.