King Arthur - Camelot and cornflakes

The cast of 'Arthur, the story of a King'.

IT will not be obvious when the Edinburgh-based Wee Stories take the stage at Eden Court to launch a new version of one of their most successful plays, but the company has just had a major change behind the scenes.

Andy Cannon, the co-founder of Wee Stories in 1995, stood down as co-artistic director at the end of August, leaving Iain Johnstone as artistic director.

Cannon wishes to concentrate on his activities as a storyteller, in particular on a major Scottish history project which he intends to develop over the next three years, and decided that he needed to step back from his commitment to the company.

As far as Iain Johnstone is concerned, the change is not only entirely amicable, but actually only formalises a situation that already existed.

"We have been co-directors for about five years now and I think this is just an evolution," Johnstone said.

"In effect I have been running the company for a wee while anyway and for me it is likely to be essentially the same role as I have been doing. Lots of companies find it difficult to outlive their founder, but I see this as a different situation."

A key factor in that difference is that Cannon is becoming an associate artist with the company, a role already held by the third member of the familiar on-stage triumvirate, Dave Trouton, and will continue to work with them when possible.

All three will be in place when they bring a new version of "Arthur, The Story of a King" to the OneTouch Theatre this weekend.

The multi-award winning show was originally designed for large theatres and played in what is now the Empire Theatre at Eden Court, but this version is aimed at smaller venues.

"We have scaled it down to work in medium size theatres," Johnstone said.

"It was such a great success for us, but we were never able to contemplate taking it abroad, which is something we very much wanted to do, because it was so large — we had a team of 12 people on the road, whereas this time there are five people involved, three performers and two technical staff.

"We hope that will allow us to push it abroad, and also we have to face the fact that for lots of companies, things are getting tight financially — I would think there are very few companies who could tour a show with 12 people at the moment."

While it has been redesigned for smaller spaces and has lost the vocal backing group — at least in person — Johnstone also pointed out that in other ways it has been expanded.

"In some ways we have made it bigger — there is a lot more audio-visual, for example, and although we don't have a band this time, there is still live music in the show and the singers are going to be with us in recorded form. So musically it will be a mix of live and recorded, and it is still a very visual and theatrical show.

"It's six years since we did it, so inevitably there has been quite a lot of tweaking of details anyway. It was a very successful show and this will let us take it to places we haven't been able to before."

Including a new location within Eden Court.

"We performed it on the main stage at Eden Court, whereas this time we will be in the OneTouch Theatre, which is a space that I love anyway," Johnstone said.

"We will also be able to visit some more rural parts of the country that have not had the chance to see it, including Universal Hall at Findhorn."

Johnstone acknowledged that reviving such a successful production did create a certain amount of pressure to replicate the earlier achievements.

"There is a pressure in trying to keep the emotional impact and the comedy that made it a success in the first place. We have the same cast, which helps, and I think we have improved the visuals. For us it is a bit like meeting an old friend again, but it was a landmark piece for the company, so there is a bit of expectation there."

* "Arthur, The Story of a King" is at the OneTouch Theatre tomorrow at 7pm and Sunday at 2.30pm.