Tickets on-sale from 10am on 25th of May
There is a schools performance on 26th of October at 11am - Tickets £11 each - Please contact groups@macrobertartscentre.org
There is hardly a town or city in Scotland that doesn’t have its own Italian café, chippy or ice-cream parlour. And it’s in one of these much-loved establishments that the story of Tally’s Blood starts…
Lucia can wrap her aunt and uncle around her little finger, cry to order, and she doesn’t like going to school. She likes Hughie though, so much so that they seal their friendship with a secret ceremony in the shop storeroom – aided by an illicit bottle of ‘ginger’.
Auntie Rosinella loves Lucia like all the children she never had, but will anyone – particularly a ‘Scotch’ boy – ever be good enough for the girl she loves ‘best in the whole wide world’?
As their childhood camaraderie blossoms into romance, Lucia and Hughie face more challenges than their countries taking opposing sides in the Second World War.
Told with heart and humour, Tally’s Blood follows the lives of an Italian immigrant family in Scotland, from the 1930s through to the 1950s, in a sweeping tale of poverty, passion and prejudice that travels from the west of Scotland to the sun-baked Italian countryside.
This new production marks 20 years since the last professional tour of Tally’s Blood, which was also directed by Ken Alexander in 2003.
Press quotes from Ken Alexander’s 2003 production for info
‘We love and laugh and hope and fear and dance and play… This is the stuff of life.’ Ann Marie Di Mambro
‘Di Mambro… manages to convey simply and with poignance the full implications of cultural stereotyping and intolerance’ The Herald
‘if you don’t see anything else this season, see this one’ The Courier
‘Anne Marie Di Mambro’s deceptively simple writing not just of the characters but of the Scots and Italians over two decades’ The Courier
‘Ken Alexander's production is near perfect and brimming with warmth’ Sunday Herald
‘an impeccable cast directed with characteristic no-nonsense economy by Ken Alexander, make the very best of it’ The Times
‘Alexander’s production is performed with such certainty, such calm understanding, such attention to detail, that its charm is irresistible’ The List
Ken Alexander’s insightful production…flows like a soda fountain…a consistent and intelligent sensitivity that lifts it well clear of cliché and mawkish sentiment into the realm of rattling good, perceptive theatre’ The Stage