I think Gordon’s story had rattled round my head as an actor for a long time, because ‘Dave the actor’ thought, ‘there aren’t going to be many actors who can do it. The writer of that play was an amazing Fife writer called Gregory Burke. “For about two and a half years it was the biggest play in the world. The obvious place to start was how does an actor in one of the most successful plays of recent years come to write and perform a tribute Gordon Duncan? “I was in a big play with the National Theatre of Scotland called Black Watch”, explained David.
I had the pleasure of seeing the play as part of Celtic Connections in January 2019 and was then lucky enough to catch up with writer and performer David Colvin for pizza, beer and conversation on how the play came about. This is not in anyway to diminish the impact of a whole host of other players in this story such Fred Morrison, Martyn Bennett, Robert Mathieson, Dougie Pincock, Duncan McGillivray, Gary West, Finlay MacDonald and Chris Armstrong to name but a few, and plays, films or operas, may well come to be written about their impact on the piping world but Thunderstruck by David Colvin has at it’s heart the impact that first hearing the man, that Hamish Moore called ‘a National Treasure’, had on him and how he thought about music. That impact had a lasting effect on many, and some of them went on to build on Gordon’s legacy to get us to the place where we are now, where it’s the music that counts, and the old and the new sit very comfortably side by side.
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