Greg Hemphill & Ford Kiernan: 'Still Game' stage production

TV’s Still Game to return to the stage

 

Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill have given their blessing for the stage adaptation.
Picture: Phil Wilkinson

Still Game is to make a return after a six-year absence with the blessing of Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill, the duo behind the series.

The duo, who also starred in another BBC comedy hit, Chewing The Fat, have given permission for the stage production.
Read more at Scotsman

Greg Hemphill and Pamela Byrne: charity support

Scottish stars help vital charity to really have a ball

TV stars, sponsors and friends have rallied round to help a Lenzie-based charity take a step closer to realising its dream.
Deafblind Scotland hosted its second ‘Field of Dreams’ Gala Ball recently at the Thistle Hotel in Glasgow to raise funds for a £1.3million training and resource centre in Lenzie.
‘Chewin’ the Fat’ and ‘Still Game’ star Greg Hemphill was there, along with ‘River City’ actress Pamela Byrne, who plays Hayley in the soap.
They joined supporters, sponsors and members of the deafblind community – letting their hair down to support the building of a Scottish centre for the dual sensory impaired on the ‘Field of Dreams’ site in East Dunbartonshire.
Greg later Tweeted: “Had a really amazing time at Deafblind Scotland’s Field of Dreams Gala Ball tonight.
“Met some lovely, amazing and inspirational people.”
Read more at Kirkintilloch Herald

Greg Hemphill: "under lock and key"

From Och Aye The News at BBC Scotlandshire:

Greg Hemphill under lock & key after Twitter meltdown
By Ellenback Broadfud, Our SLAB Health Correspondent and Jackie Baillie's BFF

Hemphill "Sectioned not Separate"

Family and friends of Greg Hemphill last night voiced concern for the comedy genius following a Twitter separatist rant-a-thon meltdown that was directed, quite unfairly, at spoof broadcasting channel the BBC.Speculation grows that the 43 year old Greg Hemphill is under close medical supervision after a vociferous and highly unwarranted attack on the satirical BBC website, the iPlayer – a cheap knockoff of this channel's ayePlayer - closely followed by insane ramblings related to "independence".
The comedian said bosses were "stifling" Scottish culture by only showing English content on the network's world service. Hemphill claimed that BBC iPlayer does not allow audiences outside of the UK to watch any Scottish content, comparing the broadcaster to former Tory leader Margaret Thatcher.
Hemphill Tweeted for hours in a demented outpouring of rage against the BBC and its iPlayer, complaining that only material made in London was available outwith Scotland, having clearly failed to realise that the 'i' in 'iPlayer' stands for Ingerlund.

Examples of the madness tweeted at the height of his rant

In his deranged tweets, Mr Hemphill referenced the London BBC Blue Tick, which BBC Scotlandshire believes to be a small insect that attaches itself to grazing animals and tourists. Also known as the Clegg, it is very similar to, but not related to, the Deputy Prime Minister.It has been theorised that the Blue Tick's bite causes a medical condition called "Separatist Nutter Pandemic" in a small percentage of the population. The disorder is said to have symptoms which include pro-separation anxiety and rampant anti-English paranoia.
This BBC Scotlandshire reporter has learned Mr Hemphill was detained in hospital under the Mental Health Act, thanks to an order signed by a Dr. Richard Simpson MSP, when it became apparent the comic was suffering from an advanced case of SNP. Apparently he was heard to scream, "You can section me, but you'll never take my freeeeedooooom!" as he was being locked up.
BBC Scotlandshire contacted Mr Hemphill's former comedy partner Ford Kiernan who immediately demonstrated the kind of concern we should all express for those suffering from SNP:
"That fanny bawz can stew in his ane shite fur aw ah care!"

Jackie B from Dumbarton expresses her anonymous concerns

One minor acquaintance of a friend of a friend of Mr Hemphill, who has asked to be identified simply as Jackie B from Dumbarton, has expressed concern about the care available to sufferers of swivel-eyed separatism:"It is no coincidence that this separatist SNP disease has reached epidemic proportions under the lying scheming dictatorship of Wee King Eck the curry-muncher," said Jackie.
"Nicola Sturgeon failed to prevent the epidemic from starting when she was the Health Secretary and under Alex Neil's supervision it is now a public health disaster. Infection rates for SNP have never been as high as they are now, with Scotlandshire being the most likely place to catch SNP in the entire EU," she added.
"I'm shocked to have found out that the Scotlandshire Government has rewritten the waiting target guarantee rules to ensure SNP does not require treatment until after Autumn 2014," she chipped in.
After stalking the Scotlandshire Government's Health Secretary for a week – well you never know what other dirt can be dug up - this correspondent pounced to ask about Mr Hemphill and the spread of SNP.

Lady Zara Unpaid-Intern wetuhns

Mr Neil commented:"Let me assure you that having a pro-independence mindset is not a mental health issue."
"The Scottish Government takes mental health very seriously and is putting record levels of funding into services to help those affected by a range of mental health conditions."
Speaking off the record, he had the audacity to criticise the professionalism of this reporter. Here at BBC Scotlandshire we don't do "off the record" so here's what he said:
"Ellenback, is it no aboot time to stop just topin' and tailin' Labour Party press releases? Your big pal Jackie is takin' those lies too far, so just gonnae no dae it!"
We spoke to the controller of subtitles Lady Zara Unpaid-Intern about Hemphill's concerns. Her Ladyship told us:
"If we weah to allow pwogwams made in Scotchland for a Scotch audiance to be ay-ahd in mow-awh civilised pahts of the wuld, no-one would undehstand them, and this would give entiahly the wong impwession of the BBC and the Ingwish, pawticulawly to foweignehs.
"Scotch people have such stwong accints, and speak using stwange wuds. We should need to subtitle evwything, and most of the sense of the twansmisions would be lost in twanslation. In any case, theah would be no demand foh this sott of pwogwam outside Gwasgow.

Labour's Ian Davidson MP issues a dire warning

Ian Davidson MP, Govan's Big Man in Westminster and Chairchoob of the Scottish Home Affairs committee for Sad Wankers Eternally Dreaming of Getting Independence Nullified warned off Mr Hemphill when he growled:"Thur's only wan man big enough tae gie oot doins tae the BBC in Scoatlandshire and it's no that clown Hemphill! An, he'll be getting wan humsell if he disnae drap aw that Twee'erin' shite".
Johann Lamont-Davidson, Labour's leader in Scotlandshire, was unavailable for comment as she was busy cleaning up the fallout from member's affairs elsewhere in Glesgatoon City Cooncil.

Correspondent Request to Unionist Moaners

This correspondent is VERY interested in hearing from any SNP sufferer who has experienced problems getting to see a health professional within the Scotlandshire Government’s 18 weeks waiting time guarantee.
Please use the Moan form to contact me

Source (including images): BBC Scotlandshire

Greg Hemphill: 'Living With Mother'

Sherlock's Mark Gatiss among the cast of Living with Mother series two

Doctor Who writer joins an all-star cast including Brigit Forsyth, Tom Goodman-Hill and Alison Steadman in the returning Radio 4 comedy

Sherlock co-creator Mark Gatiss will be among the cast of Living with Mother when the programme returns to BBC Radio 4 later this month.

The Doctor Who writer will be joined by Brigit Forsyth, Tom Goodman-Hill, Greg Hemphill, Susan Jameson, Daniel Mays, Linda Robson and Alison Steadman in the second series of Alexander Kirk’s family-based comedy.

Living with Mother, which was first broadcast in 2011, explores the dilemmas faced by men who continue living with their mothers long into adulthood. Each of the new series’ four episodes will offer listeners a 15-minute snapshot of the life of a different family.

In the first episode, Gatiss will play a no-talent wannabe pop-star called Marlon whose mother (Jameson) can’t bear the thought of her son humiliating himself by showcasing his 'singing' on a nationally-broadcast TV talent show.

Linda Robson will appear in episode two as a hypochondriac mum who babies her grown-up son (Mays), while Alison Steadman and Tom Goodman-Hill star in episode three as two characters who conspire to stay in a beach chalet over winter as a means of saving money.

Brigit Forsyth and Greg Hemphill make up the fourth episode’s partnership, respectively playing a fitness fanatic mum and her overweight, couch-potato son.

The first series of Living with Mother earned critical praise when it was broadcast, being described in Radio Times as an "astutely-observed comedy series" in which "easy laughs are replaced with a lip-trembling insight into vulnerability, lack of self-confidence and interdependency."

Living with Mother’s second series will begin on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday 31 October at 11:15pm.

Source: Radio Times

 

Alex Salmond's OAP recruit in his bid for Victor-y

Alex Salmon might just have found the perfect recruiting sergeant to persuade Scottish pensioners to vote for independence – grumpy Victor from the BBC sitcom, Still Game. 

Actor Greg Hemphill – who plays Victor McDade, one half of the iconic Craiglang double act alongside his pal Jack Jarvis, played by Ford Kiernan – has suggested he will be voting ‘Yes’ in the 2014 referendum. 

The 42-year-old star has so far refused to be drawn on his views on separation, insisting that “there was a curtain on the polling booth for a reason”. 

However, he said on Twitter last week: “Once Scotland votes for Independence, Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle will want it too, thereby ridding themselves of the Tories forever.” 
The comment was picked up by the Celebs4indy Twitter page, which retweets comments by celebrities who back independence. 

Hemphill later predicted that the “great cities of the North” would leave England and join Scotland if the Union was dissolved. He added: “We will forever take the p*** out of them for being Southern Jessies.” 

Despite his desire to stay impartial, the actor has made a number of comments on Twitter that appear to show his true colours. When Ultimo bra tycoon Michelle Mone threatened to move to London in the event of a ‘Yes’ vote, he said: “I was going to vote for Scottish independence but now I can’t because Michelle Mone might leave.” 

Source: Express

Greg Hemphill: no revival for 'Still Game'

Greg Hemphill insists Still Game won't return to TV screens despite online campaign

The online campaign saw more than 8500 people sign up, however the Scots comic revealed there were no plans to revive the hit show

Still Game star Greg Hemphill has told internet campaigners the show won’t be coming back… for now.

More than 8500 people signed up for a Facebook group to revive Jack and Victor’s adventures. It called on 500 people to tweet Hemphill and encourage him to work with co-creator Ford Kiernan again.

Responding to dozens of tweets, he wrote: “Sorry to report that Ford and I have no plans at the moment to bring Still Game back.”

The hit BBC show ran for 44 episodes between 2002 and 2007. Scots got hooked on the OAPs’ hilarious adventures in fictional Craiglang. But the laughs stopped when Hemphill and Kiernan split over differences at their production company Effingee.

Source: Daily Record

Greg Hemphill and Jimmy Chisholm: On The Fringe Podcast

From  The Scotsman:

Our latest podcast features Greg Hemphill from Still Game and Jimmy Chisholm from Take The High Road. They talk to Arts and Entertainment Editor Liam Rudden about their show An Appointmnent With The Wicker Man.

DOWNLOAD THE PODCAST (right click and ‘save as’) here
Or download it direct from iTunes by clicking here

Catch An Appointment with The Wicker Man at the Assembly Rooms

Source: Scotsman 

Greg hemphill: Appointment with The Wicker Man review

Edinburgh Fringe : Appointment with The Wicker Man – The Assembly Rooms

The Public Reviews Rating: ★★★★☆

West end smash comedy The 39 Steps has carved a path for comedic stage adaptations over the years including Ben Hur and Casablanca, now The National Theatre Scotland turn their gaze onto cult horror classic The Wicker Man.

It has to be said from the outset that this isn’t a straight adaptation, Appointment with the Wicker Man, take the premise of a play within the play, performed by The Loch Parry Players, have a read of their very funny programme before the show to get a taste of what is to come.

The company have lost their main actor and have employed TV star Rory Mulligan (played with sexy sophistication by Sean Biggerstaff) to save the day and take the role of Sergeant Howie, however all isn’t want it first seems, with director Callum Guthrie (Johnny McKnight) splicing up the show with musical numbers and broadway style choreography, throw in a mystery surrounding Artistic Director of the Loch Parry Players, Finlay Fothergill and things start to parallel the iconic movie…not the crap one starring Nicholas Cage.

Writers Greg Hemphill and Donald McLeary bring gag after gag with their fast paced, anarchic script which is tightly delivered in Vicky Featherstone’s deft direction, the set designed by Chloe Lamford hides many hilarious details including a poster of past Loch Parry production of Gary Glitter:Mad About The Boy.

Appointment with the Wicker Man is a massive crowd pleaser, with inventive staging, hilarious script and uniformly excellent cast, how can you not be won over by The Loch Parry Players?

Runs until 26th August

Source: The Public Reviews

National Theatre of Scotland says “Join us and meet the Wicker Man”

From the National Theatre of Scotland blog:

Calling all bloggers, vloggers, tweeters, instagrammers, film buffs and fans of Loch Parry’s premier amateur dramatics company.

Join us at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for an exclusive event for social media users with Appointment with the Wicker Man

This is a one-off opportunity to photograph and film a scene from the show and meet the cast before enjoying the afternoon’s performance for free.

Co-written by and starring one of Scotland’s most popular performers, Greg Hemphill (Chewin’ the Fat) with Sean Biggerstaff (Harry Potter) and featuring a top line-up of Scottish comic talent, Appointment with The Wicker Man, is a new musical adaptation and an affectionate spoof homage to Robin Hardy’s cult film classic.

The event takes place at the Assembly Rooms, George St, Edinburgh on Tuesday 7th August, at 12.45pm for a 1pm start. Participants will receive a complementary ticket to the performance at 3.10pm.

Find out more about the show and watch the trailer here. http://www.nationaltheatrescotland.com/content/default.asp?page=s880

Join in the conversation by using the Twitter hashtag #WickerMan

Places are limited so if you would like to attend please register in advance by emailing eve.nicol@nationaltheatrescotland.com

Appointment with The Wicker Man is on at the Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, 1 – 26 Aug (not Mondays), 3.10pm.

Source: National Theatre of Scotland

National Theatre of Scotland at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2012

The National Theatre of Scotland will be presenting two productions at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Appointment with The Wicker Man returns after a successful Scottish tour earlier this year, with Greg Hemphill and all the original cast,  as does Molly Taylor’s, Love Letters to the Public Transport System, following Scottish tour dates and an acclaimed run as a work in progress in 2011. Both productions are being presented at the refurbished Assembly Rooms on George Street.

Since the National Theatre of Scotland’s launch in 2006, the Company has presented  six productions at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe: Black Watch (2006); Venus As A Boy (2007); Architecting (2008); Beautiful Burnout (2010) and The Wheel and The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart last year. All winners of  either a Herald Angel or a Scotsman Fringe First.

Read more (with video) at National Theatre of Scotland 

Also reported (with listings) by All Media Scotland 

Watching Ourselves: 60 years of TV in Scotland

Greg Hemphill presents an informative, amusing series that explores the best moments in the history of Scottish programme making to celebrate 60 years of television broadcasting in Scotland

The best of drama, comedy, sport and documentary from the last 60 years have been dusted off and brought back to the small screen. Marking the sixtieth anniversary of television broadcasting in Scotland this seven-part series paints a picture of Scottish television and society.

With characteristic warmth and humour Greg Hemphill acts as guide through the years of broadcasting history talking to the actors, producers, writers, directors, and viewers who have found parts of their lives immortalised in TV history.

Source: BBC

1. Breaking Stories
Celebrating 60 years of television in Scotland, a look at Scotland's history of great television journalism. From reporter Fyfe Robertson's stylish reports in a trilby on horseback for Tonight, to Duncan Campbell's 1985 Secret Society episode - The Zircon Affair - which landed the BBC in trouble with the government. Plus Kirsty Wark's Thatcher interview, coverage of the trio of tragedies that struck Scotland: Lockerbie, Piper Alpha and Dunblane, and the more recently Panorama investigation Britain's Homecare Scandal.
    Broadcast on BBC One, 7:30PM Wed, 28 Mar 2012

    Available until 7:59PM Wed, 16 May 2012

    First broadcast BBC One, 7:30PM Wed, 28 Mar 2012

    Duration 30 minutes

Watch on BBC iPlayer

Scots animated film starring Sir Sean Connery receives international premiere

An animated movie starring the voice of Sir Sean Connery is to premiere at a US film festival next month.

The former James Bond star came out of retirement to play a kilted, skateboarding pensioner in Billi the Vet.

Sir Sean, 81, is also an executive producer on the movie – his first voiceover role – which will debut at the Sonoma International Film Festival near San Francisco.

He plays a retired Highland vet racing to save the last beaver in Scotland.

Sir Billi has been more than six years in the making, starting out as a 20-minute short but now a full-length feature. The film is the brainchild of entrepreneur Tessa Hartmann, who wrote the screenplay, and her husband Sascha, who directed it.

Sir Sean said: “I’m excited to be a part of this incredible film.

“Sir Billi is truly a first-class film, with an exceptional cast and is sure to delight audiences of all ages.

“There’s an incredible amount of work that goes into animated productions and I am delighted that Sascha and his team have completed what has been a labour of love.

“I am thrilled with the final cut.”

Sascha said: “Sir Sean has been incredible. From day one, we knew he was perfect for the role of Sir Billi – being a true Scottish hero and also a grandfather himself.

“No matter how many times I hear his legendary voice on the film, it still gives me a thrill.”

Other stars lending their voices to the film include Alan Cumming, Alex Norton, Ford Kiernan, Greg Hemphill and Ruby Wax.

Welsh singer Dame Shirley Bassey performs the film’s title track Guardian of the Highlands.

The film will be shown at Sonoma on April 13. 

After the red carpet event, there will be VIP dinner with salmon, haggis, Tunnock’s tea cakes, Walkers shortbread and whisky.

Watch an interview and trailer at Daily Record

Social Media Call for "An Appointment with The Wicker Man"

Social media users are invited to take pictures and film footage of the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of An Appointment With The Wicker Man on Friday 17th February at 11.45am for a 12pm start at the Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling.

This is an exclusive opportunity to photograph and film two scenes from the production and to meet the famous Loch Parry Players. The cast and creative team will also be available for interviews.

Based on the cult film, An Appointment With The Wicker Man is co-written by Greg Hemphill and Donald McLeary and directed by Vicky Featherstone.

The cast includes Greg Hemphill and Paul Riley who worked together on Chewin’ The Fat and the spin off Still Game. They are joined on stage by Sean Biggerstaff who played Oliver Wood in the Harry Potter films.

The full cast is Sean Biggerstaff, Jimmy Chisholm, Greg Hemphill, Johnny McKnight, Sally Reid, Paul Riley and Rosalind Sydney.

Places are limited so if you would like to attend please register in advance by emailing andrew.neilson@nationaltheatrescotland.com

The first twenty people to register will be given a free ticket to see the whole show on Friday 17th February at 7.30pm.

In the meantime why not tweet about production using the hashtag #wickerman or find out what happens at a social media call.

The National Theatre of Scotland’s production of An Appointment With The Wicker Man is supported by Bank of Scotland and tours to His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen from 21-25 Feb, Theatre Royal, Glasgow 28 Feb-3 March, Eden Court, Inverness 6-10 March and The Alhambra, Dunfermline 21-24 March. More information at www.nationaltheatrescotland.com

Source National Theatre of Scotland

Preview review of An Appointment With The Wicker Man

'Animal masks" reads the cardboard box in the corner of the rehearsal room.

A mandolin lies abandoned by the kettle. Off to one side a dancer is running through her moves, tying imaginary ribbons round an unseen maypole. Meanwhile, torrential rain is battering against the room's perspex skylights, so violently it almost drowns out the haunting Gaelic harmonies of the seven singers sat in a semi-circle. They switch to something more robust, a 13th-century hymn in Middle English. It's entitled, jarringly in the circumstances, Summer Is A-Coming In. The rain continues to batter. It's all as good an introduction as any to the strange, skewed world of The Wicker Man, one of agricultural necromancy and free-range deviants.

Now celebrating its 40th anniversary, The Wicker Man has become that rarest and most circular of things: a film about cultism that in itself became a cult. Within the past decade particularly, The Wicker Man has ascended into a select band of cinematic immortals, as the so-called Citizen Kane of horror movies. Shot around Dumfries and Galloway, and studded with weird, yielding ditties in praise of bosky naughtiness, it has been restored and remastered, referenced and reverenced. There are shelves of academic Wicker Man analysis and, at the last count, four Wicker Man television documentaries. It has even survived the most calamitous of Hollywood remakes starring a bewildered Nicolas Cage. The Wicker Tree, a sequel of sorts by the director of the original, is imminent. An Appointment With The Wicker Man, a theatrical interpretation of the film, written by Greg Hemphill and Donald McLeary for the National Theatre Of Scotland (NTS), goes on tour later this month.

The Wicker Man is now part of the language. Just as we know a Walter Mitty character is a fantasist or that a Mrs Robinson is a predatory older woman, we know what's meant on hearing that something is a bit Wicker Man. It's a phrase that evokes every urban prejudice against life in remote rural communities; the lurking sense that something sinister is going on in every woodshed; that humanity gets up to no good when its nearest neighbour is three miles distant.

Those villages where you can still buy golliwogs, mousetraps and tea-towels with clowns on – they're a bit Wicker Man; Orkney pubs where you won't get served – they're Wickerish too. As Sherlock Holmes tells Watson in The Adventure Of The Copper Beeches: "Look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser."

Given the prevalence in Scotland of such isolation it's scarcely surprising that the film – and the NTS production and The Wicker Tree – mine some faultline in the national psyche. The Wicker Man is the anxiety dream of the city-dweller put on to celluloid.

One image recurs in the film and has entered our visual lexicon of the unspeakably creepy: Summerisle's villagers rising with sudden vigilance from behind low walls, their faces obscured by animal masks like those piled up in the rehearsal room box.

"We've watched the film a couple of times together as a company," says Hemphill, "and sometimes there's a bit of tittering going on. The very camp pub landlord always gets a laugh, or some of the lines haven't aged well. I sit there thinking: 'How dare they laugh – this is a classic, can't they see?' But then I realised the more they laugh the more powerful the ending becomes, when the horror of Howie's situation kicks in. And they were silent for the last 20 minutes – you couldn't hear a pin drop. Because The Wicker Man is not a traditional horror movie. It doesn't set out to scare you; it sets out to trick you."

Conceived by playwright and screenwriter Anthony Shaffer, The Wicker Man's story is as well known now as that of Whisky Galore! The devout Sergeant Neil Howie (Edward Woodward) regulates the sleepy Highland port of Ullwater with unsmiling probity. He receives a letter from Summerisle, a seldom-visited private fiefdom, alleging that teenager Rowan Morrison is missing. Howie leaves by seaplane immediately.

What he finds is Sodom twinned with the Arran Folk Festival. The mysterious Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee, forsaking his cape for a tweed jacket) has allowed the islanders to abandon Christianity and revert to the Old Religion. Superstition and folklore hold sway, as does a cult of fertility; teenage boys are deflowered ceremonially by Willow MacGregor (Britt Ekland). Maypoles and phallic topiary dot the landscape. Churches lie in ruin. Couples fornicate openly after carousing in pubs free from licensing restrictions. Through Howie's eyes we see a wild, unfettered pagan community that disgusts him.

It's all a ruse, of course. Rowan Morrison is not missing. The island's apple crop failed calamitously last year and the Old Religion demands that the goddess be appeased. What ensues is perhaps one of the most unforgettable climaxes in all cinema. The "Christian copper" is dragged to a 30ft-high wicker effigy and placed high inside it while torchbearers set it aflame. As the community of Summerisle dance and sing below, Howie goes to meet his maker, his blood-curdling screams for mercy borne away on the wind.

Yet it isn't simply the movie's plot for which posterity treasures The Wicker Man. The making of the film is one of the most infamous black comedies in cinema history. Everything that could go wrong did – twice. The film was something of a whim, a one-off, from the outset, cooked up to aid Christopher Lee escape his typecasting as the tall, dark and gruesome focus of the Hammer horror canon. "Christopher had come to me," Anthony Shaffer told me in 1999, "and said, 'I'm very unhappy. I want to do a film without women who look like Barbara Windsor running up and down papier-mache corridors screaming, without the contact lenses and the fangs.' He wanted to do something more manly, with more originality."

Despite this caveat, the film was rushed into production with a cast described best as motley. Bit players were hired from the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow. Local Gallovidians got their chance. There was also a practising Australian white witch and former wife of Sean Connery (Diane Cilento); a fixture of the Scottish pantomime scene (Walter Carr); the man who taught David Bowie mime (Lindsay Kemp, playing the aforementioned camp landlord); a Pole (Ingrid Pitt) portraying, in her words, a "nymphomaniac librarian"; and a Swede, Britt Ekland, whose accent was so thick it required redubbing by Annie Ross.

The panicked production schedule meant a story set at the height of spring needed to be shot in late October, on the blustery cliff tops of coastal Scotland. The rush meant Shepperton studios had not been booked for interiors. Plastic apple blossom was hung on wind-blasted trees. Temperatures on set dropped so low the cast sucked on ice cubes to prevent their breath condensing on camera. They changed their costumes in the public toilets of a nearby caravan park. Tempers flared constantly. After work, in the bar of the Ellangowan Hotel in Creetown, the hard-drinking cast sought to deepen their acquaintance with Glenmorangie, or the Big GM as it was known. Ekland caused a press storm when she claimed in an interview that Newton Stewart was "the most dismal place in creation".

Yet worse was coming. At a time when Hammer horror was being supplanted by the suburban sex comedy, the board of producers British Lion decided no audience existed for a horror-musical set in the Highlands. The sole release the film could expect was as a supporting feature to the Julie Christie shocker Don't Look Now. Becoming such, though, meant much footage had to hit the cutting-room floor. The abbreviated orphan film was pushed out on a despondent tour of Britain's provinces in December, 1973. "I mean, this was an Anthony Shaffer picture," Edward Woodward told me. "In contemporary terms that would be like a Steven Spielberg film going straight to DVD – it was virtually unthinkable." By 1974 The Wicker Man was all-but forgotten, if it had ever been noticed.

Then something curious began to happen. In 1976, the film was reissued by a new distribution company in the US and began to break box-office records in San Francisco and New York, aided by a review claiming it was a "philosophical soft-core Scottish thriller musical". Its discarded footage was incorporated into a new version released on home video. In Britain, the Wicker Man Appreciation Society, a sodality of furiously photocopying devotees, made an appearance. Gradually, it became become a fixture in British television's repertory of late-night horror cheapies.

Hemphill saw the film first, in 1986, in a London hotel, as his family were relocating from Montreal to Glasgow. "I was 16 and I knew nothing about it, which is the way you should come to a film with a climax like that," he says. "I assumed it was just a weird and wonderful midnight horror film. So, when the ending came I thought, 'Oh well, he's The Equaliser – he'll get out of this. He'll climb out the back of the wicker man. Or it'll rain.'

"And it didn't. I sat there thinking, 'What the hell is this? What? No!' I remember being quite upset and disturbed. Because the islanders didn't think they were giving Howie a horrible death. They were smiling as he burned, they were killing him with kindness. That's the really creepy thing that ends up haunting you."

Vicky Featherstone, artistic director of the NTS and director of the play, saw the film in the same period while studying film and theatre at Manchester University. "It appealed to the anarchic drama students in us," she reflects. "At the time there was a lot of interest in shamanism and expressive dance, I suppose, and The Wicker Man seemed to fit in with all that." Featherstone went on to co-create the cuddly-country ITV drama Where The Heart Is and head the Paines Plough company. Since 2007 her tenure as artistic director of the NTS has been widely considered a huge success, vindicating the board's decision to appoint from outwith the narrow confines of the McTheatre community. Unafraid to think big or cross-fertilise with other forms, the 44-year-old from Surrey has overseen a growing slate of surefooted productions, including Black Watch, The Missing – from the novel by Andrew O'Hagan – and Alan Cumming in The Bacchus.

"I was having a conversation with my husband [television screenwriter Danny Brown] about whether there was a gap in the way the NTS made theatre, particularly in terms of addressing audiences who were culturally hungry but who didn't necessarily consider themselves theatre-goers," she says. "That took us on to the comedian Simon Pegg, whose work is full of film references, and that took us on to The Wicker Man."

Featherstone brought the notion to Hemphill, co-creator of the BBC comedy fixtures Chewin' The Fat and Still Game, and collaborator Donald McLeary, a writer and performer whose intimacy with rural skulduggery and police procedure were honed during his stint as PC Plum on the children's TV show Balamory. The connection was only strengthened when he noticed a coffin in one scene of the film had "McLeary" written along its interior. The pair convene Sunday evening social gatherings at which two horror films are watched, nights at which The Wicker Man is staple viewing. "We were such fans of the film that even if Vicky had asked for us for a line-by-line recreation we would have written that," says Hemphill, "but it would have been rubbish. A stage show, we thought, would need to have the same mesmerising soft-porn sexual madness of the film. That was our jumping-off point – we can't do a theatrical version of the film: so what do we do?"

An Appointment With The Wicker Man is the answer, a Scottish comedy hybrid of Hamlet and Abigail's Party, in which rural claustrophobia weaves like bindweed through the delusions of an amateur theatre troupe. In the village of Loch Parry, a ramshackle crew of egotists and ingenues have gathered to mount the stage version of the film. They profess to be obsessed with it, though they do seem rather sketchy on the details. "I've seen it," says Callum, the show's director. "Well, I've seen most of it bar the last 10 minutes. Lenny Henry was on the other side."

The faltering production is dealt a further blow – or is it? – when its Howie, played by one Roger Morgan, disappears in circumstances the remaining cast members seem reluctant to discuss. He's replaced by Rory Mulligan, star of the Taggartesque TV drama Blood Beat, another actor, the observant will note, who shares initials with Rowan Morrison, the teenage bait of the movie version. Mulligan starts his assignment believing the Loch Parry Players to be enthusiastic incompetents. Gradually, though, as the hopeless production is rehearsed, a weirder picture emerges of the Loch Parry Players. In the wilderness, lives can twist into strange gnarled shapes and drastic measures are often the only remedy. "It's important to point out we're not making fun of the film itself," says McLeary. "The jokes lie in how the film's situations reoccur in the lives of this indifferent theatre company. The Wicker Man is so deeply embedded in the culture now you can play with what audiences know about it. You say graveyard scene and people know what that involves."

In all, An Appointment With The Wicker Man is a hugely affectionate anagram of the film, playing upon one of its most crucial themes, the unbridgeable gulf between the urban and the rural. In its clever, broadly comic way it reminds us there is a range of reasons why this cheap, jinxed B-feature has come to enjoy such a singular afterlife. There's the wry, icy wit of Anthony Shaffer's unmatchable screenplay, of course, quoted throughout, and the spectacular brutality of the film's climax. It would be unfair to disclose how this finale is handled on stage but perhaps give thanks to the appropriate deity that Featherstone's initial idea wasn't pursued; toward the play's end a fire alarm was to sound, the audience escorted out – then not escorted back in again. "The idea was to leave the audience unsatisfied and uneasy, as the film does," she says. "Then the problems with the idea occurred to us."

Over and above its ending are the film's thematic concerns. The film seems to possess a quality that borders on clairvoyance. When The Wicker Man was made, faith and religiosity were hardly crucial issues of the day, in Britain at least. Forty years on, though, and we live each day with the threat of the extremes to which some will go to externalise their beliefs. The barrier between civility and barbarism is increasingly permeable. The Wicker Man argues that all faith – whether the dogmatic Christianity of Howie or the free-range deviancy of Summerisle and his neo-pagans – is man-made and socially constructed. Its message is one of a deep and abiding liberal humanism.

And just as The Wicker Man is a film about cultism that became a cult it is also a phenomenon about the life force that refuses to die. Howie believes God is the universal animating force; Summerisle believes it is nature. Whatever it is, on whichever side of the date you fall, The Wicker Man and its reputation can't stop flourishing, as An Appointment With The Wicker Man is just the latest entity to demonstrate.

"The film survives because it invites you to think for yourself; it insists in it," Anthony Shaffer told me in 1999. "There is something in the very frames of that picture which is saying, 'I am living and I will go on living.' I think Sgt Howie and Lord Summerisle would have approved of that -"

An Appointment With The Wicker Man opens at the Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling on February 17-18 then travels to Aberdeen, Glasgow, Inverness and Dunfermline. Visit www.nationaltheatrescotland.com. 


Source: Herald Scotland