Scottish actors have won the two main acting prizes at this year’s Edinburgh festival fringe. Cora Bissett was named best actress in The Stage awards for Acting Excellence for her role in David Greig and Gordon McIntyre’s Midsummer.
Billy Mack won the corresponding best actor prize for his role as an alcoholic in Jeremy Raison’s adaptation of Ron Butlin’s novel The Sound of My Voice. Both productions were revivals from just under a year ago.
Midsummer, a play with music, was loosely based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream but set in modern day Edinburgh. It was originally produced at and then revived by the Traverse in Edinburgh.
The Sound of My Voice, about an alcoholic whose life gradually disintegrates around him, was first produced at the Citizens in Glasgow before transferring to the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh. Both performances were short-listed in last year’s Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland although both lost out to shows outside the festival season, a further indication of the strength of acting talent currently available in Scotland.
Also highly praised in the International Festival programme was another Scots actor Kathryn Howden for her portrayal of Janet Horne, the last witch to be burned in Scotland, in Rona Munro’s new play, The Last Witch.
The Stage Awards for Acting Excellence, sponsored by the newspaper of the same name, were instigated in 1995 to redress what some saw as imbalance in favour of writers and producers on the Fringe.
