A Play, A Pie and A Pint celebrates 20 years at Oran Mor

In the end, David MacLennan’s pie (or quiche for West End veggies) was served in second billing, the meat between the play and the pint in the crypt of what was once Kelvinside Parish Church in Glasgow, reimagined by the late theatre impresario. “Colin Beattie (who opened Òran Mór, now owned by leisure magnate Stefan King) decided the play should come first.”

And so the triple-p at the top of Byres Road was speculatively launched into Scotland’s cultural calendar, with Hieroglyphics, a play written by novelist Anne Donovan.
“Nobody really expected it to endure,” says Anderson. “An early conversation David had with Colin Beattie was he could guarantee good writing but couldn’t guarantee a solid audience. Colin to his credit told him: ‘A few years down the line, they’ll be coming in their numbers.’ Not many publicans would have committed to that.”

Beattie’s prescience about the success of the 50-minute format of lunchtime theatre, will see it raise the curtain on its 20th year this year, after an astonishing 618 new plays. Anderson, a long-time collaborator with MacLennan since their days in Glasgow socio-political theatre companies 7:84 and Wildcat, meets me on a Sunday with his late friend’s wife, actress Juliet Cadzow, in what the pair refer to as MacLennan’s Office. Both were key to the project’s inception, and both are on the board of the cultural-culinary crossover.

(Image: Colin Mearns)

She says: “The cogs had been turning since the demise of Wildcat (in 1997) as to what he was going to do next and it was sparked by Colin telling him to come and see this building. David took the demise of Wildcat really hard. The socio-political thinking was always in his being, and therefore what he was wanting to carry on producing. I think that carried through to a lot of the pieces put on at Òran Mór.”

Òran Mór opened in the spring of 2004; the theatre programme it is now synonymous with followed that autumn. One raison d’etre for MacLennan’s midday theatre was to create a first step for new writers. David Ireland, now one of the country’s most sought-after screenwriters and playwrights, got his start down in the Byres Road basement, with the likes of DC Jackson and Gary McNair also earning early career stripes. The late William McIllvanney, Denise Mina, Bernard McLaverty, Jackie Kay and Louise Welsh are among those who’ve penned original short pieces. 

“David was keen to have novelists writing plays. He had approached Ian Rankin, he was in the throes of getting him, and he tried to get Lenny Henry to come and perform at one point,” says Cadzow. “He did an Arab season during the Arab Spring, did a Chinese season and a Russian season. I remember how he took all the Chinese writers off to Lake of Menteith, took them out on a boat and they started singing Chinese boat songs.”

(Image: Colin Mearns)

MacLennan died 10 years ago aged 65 having been diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease. Before he passed, his 1pm culture club, inspired by a visit to Bewley’s hotel in Dublin, had spread to other venues. Edinburgh, Ayr, Aberdeen and Greenock have all held A Play, A Pie and a Pint, with talk yet of venturing south of Newcastle.

Cadzow says: “Before he was diagnosed with MND he felt he was going to hand it over. He said we’d go travelling, he’d do some writing. We’d take a place in Spain, then we’d move to France and then Greece. It sounded great. He felt he’d done it, he’d achieved what he had wanted to achieve, and the cogs were running well.”

The new season, launching on September 2, includes a return for Still Game star Greg Hemphill’s Poker Alice, part of the 2004 season. Another name is Brian James O’Sullivan, known to thousands for his online Brido Hingwy. He has written The Last Cabaret On Earth and is in no doubt about the role Òran Mór played in his creative development. Despite being a child star in Cameron Mackintosh’s Oliver in London’s west end, it was A Play, A Pie and A Pint that helped him launch his career.

“David gave me my start 12 years ago,” he recalls.  “I had done bits and bobs and he heard I could play accordion. So I went to his flat. He and Dave Anderson were sitting at the dining table. It was for the 250th Play, Pie and Pint (The Jean Jacques Rousseau Show). He used political words I didn’t understand at the time, but I played, and he said: ‘The gig is yours if you want it.’ I couldn’t believe it. That was my first one, and I’m about to do my twelfth.”

O’Sullivan went on to study at the RCS and will appear in Macbeth in London’s west end with David Tennant later this year, reprising a previous role. He says: “I didn’t know anything about the theatre industry when I did my first Òran Mór. I didn’t really know how theatre worked. It has given me a way to learn about the industry too.

“It’s the most prolific producing theatre in Scotland as far as I know, and it shouldn’t be the only one doing that amount of work. It employs more actors and writers than anywhere else and it gives people a start who might not otherwise get one, and that’s because of what David MacLennan set up. You can pretty much walk into the building with an idea and say: 'How about it?’.”

“It’s an institution now,” notes Anderson. “The bar is high quality wise and gets higher. Writers can see their work on stage and not have to wait a lifetime, which is what happens in other places. I think he’d be justifiably pleased with himself.”

Cadzow adds: “It has grown and is so admired. It’s wonderful to think it’s survived so long but, of course, David would still be picking over something or other. Nothing would be perfect . . . least of all the quiche.”

The new season of A Play, A Pie and A Pint launches on September 2 at Òran Mór
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