Monumental

Written by Anita Sullivan, Directed by Ben Harrison and Esther Richardson

16th – 27th March 1999

A promenade production around the foyer, back alleys, bars and car parks of the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow.

Fifteen year old Mel is alone in Moscow, courtesy of her mother’s credit card.

Confused and angry, she is searching for anything that can explain her father’s mysterious disappearance. Despondent as night falls, she encounters the statue of famous revolutionary poet Vladimir Mayakovsky.

Magic, passion, poetry and politics are interwoven in the journey that follows.

A special thank you to Edwin Morgan for translating Mayakovsky’s poem ‘To Sergie Yesenin’ specially for this production.

What The Press Said

“It’s hard to say which is more out of the ordinary, Grid Iron’s odyssey round the back lanes and workshops of the Citizens’ Theatre, or playwright Anita Sullivan’s odyssey through twentieth-century Russian history. Put together, they produce a surfeit of imagination (a rare criticism, I know), which makes it no less a remarkable piece of theatre.”

The Herald

“An ambitious travelogue of body and soul in which a young girl, Melody, heads for Moscow in search of the truth about her father. Rather than embarking on some cloak-and-dagger field trip, she hooks up with a come-to-life statue of the poet Mayakovsky, and together the pair trawl through the back streets. The play makes heroes of both its leads, played with a mutual mix of spikiness and brittle vulnerability by Pauline Lockhart and Ralph Bolland.”

Sunday Herald

“Intellectual debate is achieved through the stunning theatrical eclecticism of the company, combining street theatre, intricate visual trickery, stylised performance and the trademark magic realism – you’d have to be a statue not to be moved.”

Scotland On Sunday

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