Home » West End Festival Glasgow » The Lions of Lisbon, West End Festival, OranMor, 11 June, 2017

The Lions of Lisbon, West End Festival, OranMor, 11 June, 2017

The Lions of Lisbon: A Play of Two Halves by Ian Auld & Willy Maley

OranMor, Top of Byres Road, G12 8QX

Doors open 7 p.m. Show starts 8 p.m.

A rehearsed reading with live music

Directed by Martin McCardie

Musical Director Dave Anderson

Get ready to roar for the golden anniversary of the finest silver ever lifted. If you know the history … don’t just remember it, relive it…

In May 1967, 10,000 of the greatest supporters in the world embarked on the most important crusade since the quest for the Holy Grail. They hailed from Scotland, Ireland, and every corner of the globe. Most were Celtic daft. Some were just plain daft.

The Celticade stretched from the Campsie Fells to the Pyrenees, rolling like a green carpet across Europe. Those who couldn’t afford the plane travelled on slow boats and long-distance lorries, in battered vans and buses,on rusty bikes and blistered feet, in used cars and trains that never ran on time.

The fans lived on borrowed time and borrowed money, arriving in Lisbon with a fistful of escudos and a heartful of hope. They were married to Celtic and pregnant with passion. The club was their kith and kin, their neighbour, their best friend, their ticket to immortality. They came clutching floodlit memories. They came over broken glass and stones, walking on water and living on a prayer. They came in search of paradise, and found it in Portugal.

A full cast of ten, plus live band, recreate the humour, passion and occasional calamity that accompanied a Glasgow & District XI showing Europe’s finest how the beautiful game should be played.

Tickets: £16/£15

Buy online at Ticketweb

08444 771 000

Full details

Part of West End Festival 2017

Revived, adapted, updated and directed by multi-award winning Martin McCardie, the production marks the 50th anniversary of the event, originally written and performed in 1992 to mark the 25th anniversary “The Lions of Lisbon” played to more than 15,000 with extended runs at the Tron and Pavilion. Some of the original cast from ’92, including River City’s Frank Gallagher will be in the cast. Dave Anderson (7:84, Wildcat) is MD as well as acting in the piece. Bruce Morton “The Godfather of Scottish Stand-Up” also appears.

‘The recent death of Tommy Gemmell, who scored the equalising goal in the Lisbon final, and the revelation that Billy McNeill is battling dementia, have given the production an unwelcome but
inevitable poignancy.’ Daily Record

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