THE AULD ALLIANCE
October 1981
 

Evening Times – 28 August 1981 “An auld story Enter Punter and Moanie”  Top

A play which was once rejected by the BBC as being “too strong” is to be performed by Cumbernauld Youth Theatre

For three days in October, “The Auld Alliance” is to be put before the people of Cumbernauld

The author, Eddie Boyd, told me today: “I hope it goes down well. The language is strong but I have toned it down a bit from the time that I wrote it for the BBC.”

John Haswell, the senior community drama worker at Cumbernauld Theatre, said: “It is strong but I don’t think anybody is going to take exceptions to it.

“There are one or two changes which have been made but I don’t think it will cause a horrible storm.”

The story is about two Glaswegians, Punter and Moanie, who are total misfits. They are even rejected by heaven and return to team up with Joan of Arc and become her closest advisers.

Eddie Boyd said: “The play was commissioned by the BBC and delivered on time, but they eventually chickened out of it.”

“Ian McFayden kept saying that he’ll have to get this director and that actor and actress. In the end nothing was done. They had it for two years and nothing happened.

“It’s not actually censorship. What the BBC does is to commission it, pay for it and then forget it. I wasn’t worried – I was paid.

“After two years it reverted to being my property. It was done once before, at the Holpin Arts Centre in Bridgeton, and it went down well. John Baraldi did it at the Dolphin and he is now the director of the Cumbernauld Theatre so you can see that he’s pretty keen on it.

“It’s a play about militants and non-militants. In the Dolphin production there was fight on the stage – well they know a thing or two about fighting in that end of town, don’t they?”

Boyd is now the writer in residence at Cumbernauld.

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