Benchtours

Apocalypse (A Glamorously Ugly Cabaret)

Catherine Gillard and Peter Clerke of Benchtours embark on a cabaret adventure

21 Sep 2011

Two years after they folded their lauded theatre company, benchtours, Catherine Gillard and Peter Clerke are touring with a new outfit: Occasional Cabaret. Apocalypse, their first full-length production, is developed from a two-week residency at…

The Lesson

16 Oct 2008

MODERN CLASSIC Ionesco’s absurdist classic continues to feel relevant because it chips away at our feeling that something of ourselves remains unexpressed beneath the world of manners, and the arcane language that surrounds it. In Gerry Mulgrew’s…

Gerry Mulgrew - The Lesson

2 Oct 2008

Gerry Mulgrew is a smart director, but when he’s in the rehearsal room he prefers to work from instinct. ‘I respond to Peter Stein when he says a director should have unlimited enthusiasm and absolutely no idea of what he’s going to do,’ says the man…

The First to Go

5 Jun 2008

HOLOCAUST DRAMA Tron, Glasgow, until Sat 7 Jun, then touring Seeing disabled actors performing in a mainstream theatre is rare enough. Benchtours’ production of Nabil Shaban’s play about the treatment of the disabled in Nazi Germany is doubly…

The First to Go

22 May 2008

NEW WRITING Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh, Fri 23 & Sat 24 May then touring British audiences nearly got to see The First to Go in 2002. Actor and playwright Nabil Shaban had the commission from Battersea Arts Centre and the government had pledged £50,000…

The Psychic Detective (And Those Disappeared)

23 Aug 2007

With the Scottish Arts council adopting ‘cultural entitlement’ as their current buzzword, local company, Benchtours’ solution to fulfilling funding criteria takes the form of a customised 40ft articulated truck, which, following its stint at the Fringe…