You looking at me? the cast of TAG's Monster in the Hall
Scottish actors have won two of the four prestigious Stage awards for acting at this year’s Edinburgh Festival.
BiIly Mack won the best actor award for his role as Akaky McAkay in a new adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s story, The Overcoat, set among the banks and financial institutions of Scotland.
And the entire cast of Monster in the Hall, a play by David Greig designed for teenagers and inspired by young people who care for their parents, was named the best ensemble.
Mack becomes the only actor in the awards’ 17 year history to win twice. He last won in 2009 for his role as an alcoholic in the Citizens Glasgow production of The Sound of My Voice based on a novel by Ron Butlin. The Citizens, through TAG, their company for young people, was also behind Monster in the Hall which toured Scotland earlier this year. Young carers are one of the groups at the heart of the STV Appeal 2011.
Mack’s triumph is all the more remarkable because although he is on stage virtually throughout the show, playing a painfully shy and retiring bank clerk, he hardly has any lines to deliver. The new adaptation, co-produced with a company from Finland, brings the story up to date and makes much of the changes which have overtaken banks and similar institutions in the last 30 years while Akaky is the innocent victim.
The other winners were Alessija Lause, an actress from Croatia for her role in a play by Patrick Shanley, who won an Oscar for Moonstruck called Danny and the Deep Blue Sea and to Gerard Logan who gave a solo performance of Shakespeare’s narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece.
The Stage is the weekly newspaper of the theatre business and although it has a reputation for occasionally being over generous in its reviews, there is no doubt that it can call on a depth of expertise in its awards.
