Arts Centre, Aberdeen

The Aberdeen Evening Express, 6 February 1976, reported that the Longacre Players would present at the Arts Theatre on 11 February James Saunders A Slight Accident” and Shaw’s Blanco Posnet; and on 13 February Blanco Posnet and Pirandello’s Six Characters: Shaw’s play is ‘one of Shaw’s less well-known, shorter works and has its setting in America round about 1890. There’s a horse thief, vigilantes and a sheriff, all wrapped up in a story that highlights several moral points, but with melodramatic overtones that lace the serious with the comic’. Also: ‘Bernard Shaw’s “sermon in crude melodrama” – “The Shewing Up of Blanco Posnet” – was given an attractively rumbustious production by Douglas Porteous. The cast are not entirely successful in keeping up the pace during the last quarter of the play and Posnet’s sermon needs more punch to create a sense of climax at the final curtain, but for the rest, the action is fast and furious. Stephen Illsley makes a lively, likeable Blanco (only his laugh seems artificial), sanctimonious venom spills from the unsmiling Roddy Simpson, but a more forceful approach is required of Albert Donald to lend the sheriff sufficient “body”’ (Aberdeen Press and Journal, 12 February 1976).

The Aberdeen Press and Journal, 28 February 1976, reported that the Longacre Players’ performance of Blanco Posnet was the overall winner of the Scottish Community Drama Association [SCDA] Aberdeen District Festival. The winning cast was Gillian Young, Daphne Paxton, Morag Beattie, Anne Ross, Roderick Simpson, Stephen Illesley, Colin Harper, George Smith, Susan Bruce, Albert Donald, David Rowe, Cameron Taylor and Katie Downie, with stage manager Michael Parks and producer Douglas Porteous. The production went through to the North Division final to be held at Montrose in March. Also: ‘Congratulations to the Longacre Players on winning the SCDA’s preliminary festival, last week. Their win was a popular one, and it was particularly encouraging to see how much “The Shewing of Blanco Posnet” had improved since its first appearance in the Arts Centre a week or two previously’ (Aberdeen Evening Press, 5 March 1976).