The Compass Club: A Dramatic History ~ 1954 - 2002 ~ Performers and Reviews
Over a period of 50 years the Compass Club has been presenting quality drama in Ayr and the surrounding district. With the assistance of the Compass Club Archivists, the Network has assembled an online history of the group.
Reports and Reviews
The Hollow Crown
At the Maclaurin Gallery at Easter an invited audience enjoyed an evening of poetry, prose and music by members of the Compass Club and Intimate Opera.
They presented The Hollow Crown, which takes an unconventional look at English kings and queens down the ages.
We had Bill Grierson as James I fulminating against the disgusting and dangerous habit of smoking. Richard Pugh as Henry VII quizzing his ambassadors on the form (in both senses) of his prospective spouse, while David Crouch, head of Drama at Craigie College, revealed the humble side of the braggart Henry VIII proposing marriage to Ann Boleyn.
Michael Bailey was a visiting foreigner being candid as well as complementary about Queen Elizabeth, while David Vincent as Lord Halifax, ruthlessly dissected his monarch Charles II.
Barbara Crouch cleverly evoked the novelist Fanny Burney and the Teutonic George III in an inconsequential discussion of the arts, and Kathryn McAllister summed up the novelist Jane Austen as a precocious teenage historian dealing with a dozen kings and queens in a few dismissive phrases.
The readings were interspersed with music. John Wilson, head of music at Craigie College, played Ordlando Gibbons on the spinet and Beethoven and Schumann on the piano as well as accompanying the two versatile singers, Michael Chad and Paul Biagi.
Altogether a pleasing and relaxing entertainment.
Bill Prentice
Ayrshire Post, March 1979
Equus
"Equus" by Peter Schaffer was the adventurous choice of the Compass Club for their autumn production (writes Bill Prentice).
It is a powerful drama of a psychiatrist's struggle to fathom a stable boy's incomprehensible action in blinding six horses.
Beneath the gripping narrative lies a sharp questioning of the doctor's whole function: will he, in the very act od relieving the boy of his intolerable pain, deprive him of his passion and purpose in life.
Bill Grierson directed the play deftly and fluently, his striking set enhanced by subtle lighting and effective sound, and his human horses lightly suggesting tossing manes and pawing hooves.
He also played the psychiatrist, overworked, anxious, compassionate, impatient, ultimately torn by doubt and despair.
Kathryn McAllister, as the magistrate who brings the boy to the doctor appealing for his help, presented the downright, practical attitude as against the doctor's ethical indecision.
As the boy's agonised parents, Mike Wright and Barbara Crouch convincingly etched in the father's puritanical discipline and the mother's religious obsession, without losing their concern for their son.
Eilidh Nicolson combined wide-eyed innocence and wheedling precociousness as the stable maid and girlfriend.
Outstanding among the players was David Vincent, who gave a quirky appealing and finally moving performance as the young boy, ranging from stubborn sulks and impotent rage through dawning co-operation to triumphant catharsis as he stood naked on the stage invoking his horse god Equus.
Ayrshire Post, November 1979
Rookery Nook
Ben Travers' farce, 'Rookery Nook', is now a period piece - and the period was evoked at the outset with 'Tea for Two' and the 'Charleston' played before curtain-rise on the Compass Club production at the Civic Theatre, recently.
Alison Tudhope sets the scene with an authoritative performance, all hauteaux and bandeaux and beads, as the lady of the house, angular of [profile and edgy of accent.
harry Tudhope cringes and creeps entertainingly as the cowed and craven husband, abject doormat and backless punchball of the action, teetering on tiptoe in outraged embarrassment.
Meanwhile barbara Fox stomps around to comic effect as the daily woman, bosomy and bossy, scandalised at the dubious goings on.
Much of the fun is sparked off by Roy Beeby, casual and confident as the philandering bachelor of the leering grin and co-respondent shoes and Ken O'Hara adroitly acrobatic ('He has the falling slickness'), gangling and incoherent as the silly ass invariably covered in confusion.
It was courageous top mount a play that demands split second timing and a feeling for period.
Bill Grierson, as producer, tackled it stylishly
Bill Prentice, Ayrshire Post 1979
Producers and Performers
William P Grierson
Bill Grierson was a founder member of the Compass Club. He was active in
the theatre from the 1950's until his early death in 1984.
Bill was actor and producer,
designer, writer, photographer; an all round man of the theatre. Over
the years, he staged productions for The Compass Club, Ayr Philharmonic
Society and Ayr Intimate Opera. He travelled regularly to Glasgow
to undertake opera productions.
Many people saw Bill as the predominant driving force for the activities
of the Compass Club and the foundation of Ayr Arts Guild. He was
widely admired for his collaboration with Raymond Bramwell in the development
of Ayr Intimate Opera.
Bill
was active in campaigns to save the Gaiety Theatre for the community
when the Popplewell lease ended.
In 1984, the year of his
untimely death, it seemed that he was irreplaceable. In his last Compass
Club production (John Mortimer’s autobiographical Voyage
Round My Father) Bill played one of the lead roles as the aging
and temperamental father, which proved to be a poignant final performance.
The 1971 Compass Club production of The Browning Version by
Terrence Rattigan, with Bill Grierson and Ian White. ©Compass
Club Archive
In 1985 Ayr Arts Guild decided to remember
its first Chairman by supporting two causes close to Bill's heart; the
promotion of theatre and the arts, and the advancement and encouragement
of young people.
The Guild established the Bill Grierson Fund, using the investment interest
to send a local youngster to the Scottish Youth Theatre Summer School
each year.
A fund raising concert in September 1985
saw many of his friends, all professional singers, returning to Ayr to
contribute to a musical celebration of his life and work. James Paterson,
Marilyn de Blieck, Una Buchanan, Linda Hibbert and Bernadette Donnelly
appeared with Ayr Youth Choir and Intimate Opera members under the direction
of Raymond Bramwell.
In the same spirit, The Compass Club
a performance of Mixed Doubles which took
the form of eight short plays, each for two characters, written by Alan Ayckbourn,
John Bowen, Lyndon Brook, David Campton, Alun Owen, Harold Pinter, James Saunders,
and Fay Weldon.