IT WAS TO BE A PLAY WITH NO strings attached. When David Greig and Gordon McIntyre announced their new show, Midsummer, at the Traverse last autumn, they were keen to play down its potential. It was a bit of frippery, a rom-com two-hander, lo-fi, low-budget, a genuine experiment. If it went nowhere, no-one would get hurt.
They were almost right. Midsummer is the story of hapless thirtysomethings Bob and Helena who collide one rainy night in Edinburgh, beginning a lost weekend which features a wedding, a car chase, a bondage club and £15,000 in a carrier bag. It's sill
y and a lot of fun. But it has an underlying seam of truth which struck a chord. It became a sell-out hit and was nominated for four CATS Awards.
Now Greig's "little experiment" is touring Ireland and Scotland, and will visit the Cultch Festival in Vancouver in September. It will be at the Traverse during the Fringe, when McIntyre's album of Midsummer songs will also be released. Here, the four people behind the show talk about their surprise hit, and their attempt to recreate the magic.
CORA BISSETT (Helena)"We did our first workshop week with David and Gordon about three years ago, and came back to it when other bits of funding came through. We were never sure that it was going to see the light of day so it was lovely when it did. I don't think any of us expected it to go down with such a popular vote.
"David wrote the characters of Bob and Helena around Matthew and me. They're not us, but we drew on elements of personal experience. We talked a lot about relationships that we'd been in and out of. David has a wonderfully gentle but very effective way of getting great personal detail out of you!
"I loved being involved in the process of making it – lots of heads working together. David was so generous, taking on people's ideas, and if they didn't work it didn't matter.
"Because it has so much direct interaction with the audience, it sometimes feels more like a gig, or stand-up. You get the audience on your side and you actually feel it's OK if you muck up a wee bit. The times my eyebrow fell off or when me and Matthew started corpsing, the audience was loving it because the show had a rough and ready feel about it.
"I couldn't find a more ideal show – an absolutely cracking, complex, funny, strong and vulnerable female part, and you get to do some great wee cool quirky songs as well. It is totally and utterly my dream role."
MATTHEW PIDGEON (Bob)"If there was a negative effect to being low-budget it was that I'm not sure we were entirely ready when we opened. The rehearsal period was really short, we had quite a frantic time trying to learn it all. But the positive effect was that it was an incredibly alive, exciting, nerve-wracking, intense period with very heightened emotions, which I think helped give an urgency to the story.
"I was very excited about it when we did the workshops. I thought, this could be great. But there always comes a period in rehearsals when you think: 'what have I got? have I got anything?' I would be lying if I said I didn't have doubts at points.
It does require a lot of energy. You take a deep breath when you start. Often when you do a play you get the chance to dip your toe in the water, with this you're just pitched straight in.
"But there was always this feeling that since no-one had spent a lot of money on it, we weren't expected necessarily to come up with a slick production. I think it's a bit of a fantasy for a lot of actors, to keep it as simple as possible. It's quite liberating for an actor to jangle the bells and sing a song, to knock down the fourth wall."
GORDON MCINTYRE (songwriter/musician)"It was a totally different way of writing songs for me. These had to fit a specific context, had to fit a mood; it was much more collaborative. In the final weeks, David would phone up and say 'Can I have a song by tomorrow?' But I had no problem working to deadlines, otherwise I just meander about. It forces you to make creative decisions which, more often than not, are right. Many albums are ruined by having too much time, not too little.
"It was my first experience of this kind of writing, so I had no idea how it would be received. I had no big expectations for it, other than that I was pretty sure in my head that it was good and I had a feeling that people would like it.
"The first preview night was great, the actors did an amazing job of pulling it all together. It's a very human, accessible piece of work, it's not dumbed down, it has an intelligent silliness to it that I love and people get hold of that quite quickly. The fact that it has now grown legs and is going on tour is the just reward for the work we put into it."
DAVID GREIG (playwright)"When something is experiemental and there's not so much pressure, ironically that lack of pressure means you then do something which does actually connect. You're more free to play, and the sense of fun and playing was what communicated from the show.
"Maybe if we'd had longer we'd have talked ourselves out of the silly ideas and done something less frivolous, but in a way the heart and the soul of the show is its honest fun. We didn't have the money to do anything sophisticated so we had to do unsophisticated things, but those unsophisticated things became attractive and funny.
"I've never experienced a show like it. I've had shows that were very successful, that people liked, but I've never had the feeling that I got on some of those nights, that the audience is giving something to the show that multiplies its effect.
One of the things about re-rehearsing it is trying not to question it too much, just let it be what it is, not try to unpick it because we might lose whatever the magic was. Its flaws were also its joys, and you just don't want to mess with it.
"It has very much fed back into my other work. It has encouraged me to trust my own instincts a little bit more, even when those instincts are silly or light-hearted or frivolous, because sometimes the lightest comedy is the deepest thought.
In a funny way something being successful creates its own terrors. What if people in Ireland don't understand it? The pressure we didn't have to begin with is there now. We've bought new guitars for the tour and that feels decadent when you're used to doing it for nothing. £25 for a ukelele? My brother's got one we can borrow!"
• Midsummer tours Scotland from 9 July, visiting Hawick, Dumfries, Moffat, Gairloch, Ardross, Ballachulish, and the Traverse, Edinburgh, 6-30 August.
The full article contains 1219 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
