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Scenes from the Big Picture
by Owen McCafferty
National Theatre, London
Review by Mark Shenton, Sunday Express, 20 April 2003
A play featuring a cast of 21, Scenes From The Big Picture is the kind of recklessly ambitious play that most playwrights are too timid to write because it's too difficult to find a theatre that can afford to employ that size of company
A fragmentary tale of 24 hours in the lives of some Belfast city dwellers, not all characters are as fully realised as others, but Owen McCafferty's play revolves around five main couples,
These include a drug dealer and his spaced-out, abused girlfriend;. a childless couple in which the husband., is having an affair with the local pub bartender; a middle-aged couple whose son was murdered 15 years earlier; two estranged brothers who reconcile at their father's funeral and a shopkeeper and his ill wife.
A superb ensemble cast that includes Patrick O'Kane, John Normington, June Watson, Frances Tomelty,Michelle Fairley and June Watson is a roll call of acting excellence.