When, in 1982, I covered the 7:84 theatre company tour to the Soviet Union for the Morning Star, Elizabeth MacLennan had learned enough Russian to deliver, in the hosts’ language, the lyrical Finn McCool speech from John McGrath’s play Boom, proclaiming the most beautiful music to be the sound of the people acting together.
Audiences in Moscow and Leningrad responded with enthusiastic admiration but, as we flew to Georgia, I mentioned to Liz that, from my earlier experience covering a previous tour by the Brighton Theatre Company, I knew that audiences in Tbilisi were no fans of the Russians. Overnight this remarkable actor learnt the speech phonetically in Georgian. The response was overwhelming.
