Winners Announced For Critics Awards For Theatre In Scotland

• May Sumbwanyambe’s Enough of Him wins Best New Play, Best Director and Best Production
• David Hayman and Sally Reid receive Outstanding Performance awards
• Love Beyond (Act of Remembrance) recognised in two categories; Best Technical and Best Music
• CATS Whiskers award presented to The Cheviot, The Stag and the Black, Black Oil
• Awards were presented at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh by Shauna Macdonald and Grant Stott as part of the venue’s 60th anniversary celebration

Enough of Him, May Sumbwanyambe’s ‘harrowing, but uplifting’ drama about Joseph Knight, who freed himself from slavery through the Scottish courts, topped the 2023 Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland (CATS). The National Theatre of Scotland / Pitlochry Festival Theatre co-production picked up the Best New Play (May Sumbwanyambe), Best Director (Orla O’Loughlin) and supreme award, Best Production.

“In Enough of Him, May Sumbwanyambe has made a vital contribution to Scotland’s reckoning with its too often neglected role in the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade,” says CATS co-convenor, Mark Brown. “The play expresses brilliantly the complexity of the distorted relations between ‘master’ and slave.

“The depth and intricacy of its depictions of desperately mangled, horribly unequal human relations raises it well above the well-intentioned theatre of liberal polemic. Its captivating complexity makes it not only a stunning indictment of the moral poison of racism, but also a work of extraordinary emotional, psychological and political immediacy.”

“Enough Of Him was a stunningly powerful and beautifully realised show, with a magnificent text by May Sumbwanyambe, which made - and I hope will continue to make - a vital contribution to the evolving debate about Scotland’s historic involvement with the slave trade,” adds Joyce McMillan.” A magnificently detailed and beautifully paced production co-produced by Pitlochry Festival Theatre and The National Theatre of Scotland and directed by Orla O’Loughlin, it featured superb design and music, as well as outstanding performances from Omar Austin and Matthew Pidgeon, as two men whose fractured and unequal relationship bears witness to the horror of slavery, and the damage and distortion it has inflicted, down the generations, on those whose lives were shaped by it.”

The last twelve months have seen a remarkable level of theatre making in Scotland”, says co-convenor, Michael Cox. “With 120 productions and over 80 new plays eligible for this year’s awards it would be easy to think that everything was well in the theatre world. However, with pressure on budgets at both national and local level, the fact that so much excellent theatre making has been happening is remarkable.

“As we recognise the impact of The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil on Scottish theatre over the last 50 years, it is fervently to be hoped that Scottish theatre will continue to be as vibrant and challenging over the next half century, continuing to hold up a mirror to society whilst also celebrating all that is special about Scotland.”

Veteran stage and TV actor David Hayman and Scot Squad star Sally Reid were recognised in the new Outstanding Performance category. Hayman was awarded for a performance that was funny, moving and terrifying in equal measures as Eric in Tron Theatre, Glasgow’s production of Cyprus Avenue. Sally Reid won the award for the “unaffected honesty and emotional truth” that made her performance as Shirley Valentine in Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s production of the Willy Russell classic “a masterclass in acting.”

Elsewhere, Ramesh Meyyappan’s “beautifully poignant” Love Beyond, (Act of Remembrance) - co-produced by Raw Material and Vanishing Point - which raised awareness of the impact of dementia in the Deaf community, won two awards: Best Technical and Best Music and Sound; the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh’s production of Zinnie Harris’s Macbeth (an undoing) won Best Design; and Castle Lennox – the Lyceum’s co-production with Lung Ha – was awarded Best Ensemble. Capital Theatres and Barrowland Ballet’s The Gift picked up the Best Production for Children and Young People.

A CATS Whiskers, the occasionally presented award that recognises an outstanding contribution to Scottish Theatre, was conferred on a single production for the first time. The award to The Cheviot, The Stag and the Black, Black Oil, created in 1973 by John McGrath’s 7:84 Scotland Theatre Company, was collected by two of the four surviving members of the original cast: Dolina Maclennan and John Bett. Recorded messages were sent by the other two cast members: Alex Norton and Bill Paterson.

Guest presenters for the 2023 Awards were Shauna Macdonald and Grant Stott.

The 2023 Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland were generously supported by:

STV ( Outstanding Performance awards), Equity (Best Ensemble), BECTU (Best Technical Presentation), Nick Hern Books (Best New Play), and also by BBC Scotland Radio Drama. With special thanks to the Traverse Theatre for hosting the event as part of the venue’s 60th anniversary celebrations.

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