Thursday, May 12, 2011

Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland shortlists

Congratulations to all those on the shortlists for the CATS awards 2010-2011 which were announced today. Disappointingly, despite seeing rather a lot of theatre in the last 12 months we only managed to see two of the productions recognised. While we are delighted to see "Roadkill" feature deservedly in 5 categories we're a little surprised it didn't also get the nod for John Kazek for Best Male Performance. The only other nominated show we saw was Molly Taylor's charming "Love Letters to the Public Transport System" which appears in the Best New Play category.

Other shows with multiple nominations include Dundee Rep's "Sweeney Todd", Stellar Quines/Lyceum's "Age of Arousal", the National Theatre of Scotland's "The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart" and the Traverse's "The Three Musketeers and the Princess of Spain".

We can't comment on shows we didn't see - other than to say that they must have been brilliant to edge out some of the shows we did see. There are two in particular that we expected to feature in a few categories this year that the critics have overlooked entirely - the Citizens brilliant "One Million Tiny Plays about Britain" and the Tron's outrageous "Valhalla!".

The full shortlist is available at the CATS website and the winners will be announced in a ceremony on Sunday 12th June.

1 Heckle

Bluedog said...

Like you, there were quite a few shows we never got to see, so can't really comment.

Interesting to see Blythe Duff up for an award - we missed her Oran Mor play, but caught her in the one woman show "Just Checking" at the Tron.

We did manage to see Kate Dickie in Any Given Day at the Traverse, which was pretty grim stuff, but well put together.

But agree about Roadkill - it deserves a category of its own. I wonder if it will be done anywhere else, because the subject matter is more relevant than ever it was.

In the also-rans, looking back almost a year, we enjoyed Cora Bisset's performance in From the West Bank at the Tron. Alison Peebles was also excellent in Doubt at the same theatre.

It will be interesting to see what Domenic Hill does at The Citizens for next year.