Yer Granny, is a comedy, adapted by award-winning Scottish playwright, Douglas Maxwell. It is a new and the first Scottish adaptation of Roberto La Cossa’s La Nona, Argentina’s favourite play.
The play is a comedy set in 1977, the year of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, and takes place in a Scots-Italian family fish and chip shop, The Minerva. It tells the tale of a 100-year-old granny who’s literally eating her family out of house and home. She’s already eaten their fish and chip shop into bankruptcy and now she’s working her way through their kitchen cupboards, pushing the family to desperate measures just to survive. Cammy Russo, the proud head of the family, is determined that The Minerva will rise again and that family honour will be restored –all in time for the Queen’s impending visit to sample and approve his wares.
Weel kent Scottish star of stage and screen Gregor Fisher, best known for his roles in Naked Video and as the carnaptious Rab C Nesbitt, will play the eponymous Granny in his debut role with NTS. He will be joined by a top class Scottish cast including Brian Pettifer seen most recently in em>The Musketeers; choreographer, dancer and singer Louise McCarthy, who has already appeared in the NTS 2011 production of Men Should Weep; Paul Riley from Still Game, and Chewin’ the Fat; comic actor, sidekick to Brian Cox’s Dundonian comedy character Bob Servant and face of Hogmanay’s Only an Excuse Jonathan Watson; well- loved Scottish star of the UK stage and screen, Barbara Rafferty who played the unforgettable Ella Cotter in Rab C Nesbitt; and renowned Scottish actress already familiar to NTS audiences when she played the lead role in 27 , Maureen Beattie, will also tread the boards in this very Scottish take on an Argentinian comedy classic.
La Nona premiered in Buenos Aires in 1977. In the UK, the play was first produced for the stage by Attic Theatre Company at Wimbledon Studios, London in 1995. A BBC TV version of La Nona was broadcast in 1991 as part of the Performance series starring Les Dawson as the granny, in a cast that also featured Liz Smith, Jane Horrocks, Jim Broadbent and Timothy Spall.
The play’s literal translation is by Kathy Khorrami and it is directed by Associate Director of the National Theatre of Scotland, Graham McLaren.
Yer Granny tour dates:
The Beacon, Greenock (19 and 21 May, 2015); The King’s Theatre, Glasgow (26 to 30 May, 2015); The King’s Theatre, Edinburgh (2 to 6 June, 2015); Eden Court, Inverness (9 to 13 June, 2015); Lyric Theatre, Belfast (23 to 27 June, 2015); Dundee Rep , Dundee (30 June to 4 July, 2015).
Tickets are on sale at The King’s Theatre, Glasgow and The King’s Theatre, Edinburgh. Other venues will be on sale later this month.
