The Slab Boys Trilogy

The Slab Boys Trilogy is a set of three plays by the Scottish playwright John Byrne. The trilogy was originally known as Paisley Patterns. The three plays which make up the trilogy are: The Slab Boys, Cuttin' a Rug, and Still Life. The trilogy tells the story of a group of young, urban, working-class Scots during the period 1957–1972. The Slab Boys Trilogy was revived in 2003 by the Traverse Theatre starring Paul Thomas Hickey and Iain Robertson in the lead roles. This is the first time that the Traverse Theatre have ever done a revival and it was received to great critical success. In April 2008, the Traverse Theatre premièred Nova Scotia, the fourth part of The Slab Boys story which follows the characters of Phil, Spanky and Lucille into the 21st century.

The Slab Boys

In The Slab Boys, all the action takes place in the morning and afternoon of a Friday in the winter of 1957. The scene is the Slab Room of Carpet Manufacturers A.F. Stobo & Co. of Paisley, a town near Glasgow, Scotland. The company was based on Stoddard's carpet factory in Elderslie near Paisley, where John Byrne himself worked both as a slab boy and later as a designer following graduation from art school. The slab room is a small, paint-spattered dungeon where the apprentice designers, Phil, Spanky, and Hector, mix and grind colours for the design department. Coping with this boring task requires them to have a strong sense of humour. The Slab Boys was premiered at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh in 1978. It was first performed as a Broadway production starring Kevin Bacon, Sean Penn, Val Kilmer and Jackie Earle Haley, produced by Laura Shapiro Kramer and Roberta Weissman, and directed by Robert Alan Ackerman, at the Playhouse Theatre in New York City in 1983. The production received an Outer Critics Circle Award. The Slab Boys was released as a film in 1997, directed by the author. It starred Anna Massey, Tom Watson and Julie Wilson Nimmo. It cost ₤2.5 million.