Douglas Maxwell

Smalltown collects work by Douglas Maxwell, DC Jackson and Johnny McKnight

Random Accomplice’s trio of Ayrshire-set plays

7 Mar 2011

Random Accomplice’s trio of Ayrshire-set plays by three of Scotland’s leading talents seems intended as an affectionate parody of the portmanteau horror films popularised by Amicus in the 1960s. The individual segments do, however, offer a snapshot of…

Lung Ha's Around the World in 80 Days

Interview with Maria Oller, artistic director of Lung Ha's

24 Feb 2011

What inspired you to take on Around the World in 80 Days? I wanted to give the company members a chance to do a classic play. Around the World in 80 Days came to mind as a story that is rarely produced for the stage, and is funny, with lots of…

Random Accomplice's Smalltown offers three plays by leading Scottish playwrights

New works by Douglas Maxwell, DC Jackson and Johnny McKnight

26 Jan 2011

Typical. You wait ages for a great new play to arrive and then three come along at once. As luck would have it the trio of plays that make up Random Accomplice’s latest production, Smalltown, have been crafted by three of Scotland’s leading young…

The Hot 100 2010 - Mark Millar, Kevin Bridges and Alasdair Gray take top 3 spots

Our annual chart of the people from Scotland being interesting, successful and creative

16 Dec 2010

The Hot 100 is a list of Scots who’ve made a sizeable creative splash in 2010. It includes musicians, artists, writers, actors, fashion designers, technological innovators, shop owners, festival directors, record label heads and one mad cyclist.

Spring Awakening unites Douglas Maxwell, Grid Iron and Traverse

Frank Wedekind's attack on sexually-oppressive culture relocated from Germany to Calvinist Scotland

3 Nov 2010

Boldly returning to Frank Wedekind’s original play in the wake of the enormous success of the Tony-winning musical Spring Awakening, Douglas Maxwell, together with Grid Iron and the Traverse, has created a fresh, creative and relevant new adaptation…

Why Frank Wedekind's seminal play Spring Awakening still resonates

Grid Iron unleash new production at Traverse, Edinburgh

27 Oct 2010

Frank Wedekind’s seminal drama Spring Awakening has experienced a renaissance in recent years. The often banned 1891 play, which portrays 14-year-olds grappling with ideas of sexuality, death and religion in the prohibitive climate of late 19th century…

The Bookie is playwright Douglas Maxwell’s first musical

Let down by complex plot despite suitably murky atmosphere

4 Oct 2010

Playwright Douglas Maxwell’s first musical is unlikely to threaten the market dominance of Stephen Sondheim or Rodgers and Hammerstein or even Andrew Lloyd Webber any time soon. Aly Macrae’s songs, which range from catchy to unmemorable, punctuate the…

Decky Does A Bronco

Winning revival of site-specific coming-of-age drama

12 Aug 2010

Reviving its award-winning 2000 production of Douglas Maxwell’s site-specific play Grid Iron set up home in a Canonmills park. In a circular arena focused on a swingset David, a self-confessed ‘pathological reminiscer’, dredges up childhood…

Edinburgh Festival anniversaries in 2010

15 Jul 2010

Anniversaries abound at this years festival, not least the the Comedy Awards and Assembly Rooms, both of which celebrate their 30th years.

National Theatre of Scotland's tfd season targets teenage audience

23 Feb 2010

‘Teenagers aren’t aliens, they’re just us but younger.’ It’s a fact easily forgotten but one that playwright Rob Drummond and the rest of the team behind a new season for young people from the National Theatre of Scotland are keeping firmly in mind.

Promises Promises

10 Feb 2010

It’s no mere nod and a wink to lovers of Muriel Spark that the school teacher protagonist of Douglas Maxwell’s gripping new monologue is called Margaret Anne Brodie. The character herself may claim not to have read Spark’s famous novel of sex, power and…

Promises Promises - Douglas Maxwell interview

12 Jan 2010

With The Miracle Man, his play for the NTS slated to open in March, Douglas Maxwell will be in familiar territory. Spotty trauma, adolescent angst and the icky business of entering into the adult world are house themes for Maxwell, and this new work, in…

Curtain up

7 Jan 2010

The National Theatre of Scotland has launched its programme for 2010, with highlights including a new piece of work by the team behind worldwide hit Black Watch. In line with the company’s ethos of working with a variety of art forms, in February and…

Best of a decade: Respectable in the Noughties

2 Dec 2009

Much of the most powerful art produced in Scotland in the 1980s–1990s developed in angry reaction to the political situation and tapped into our radical, left-wing and egalitarian traditions – it’s no accident that the most popular works of that period…

Douglas Maxwell

13 Mar 2008

'It’s a bit like being at the controls of a jumbo jet after four pints at lunchtime. It’s exhilarating but terrifying.’ Douglas Maxwell is employing a typically vivid metaphor for entering into fatherhood. With a child of three months recently arriving…