DIVAS tend to be a bit thin on the ground in Partick, but Alyson Orr

from Take Two Productions' base in Gardner Street, has got so many of

them that she is exporting them to Edinburgh. Her one-woman show, Divas,

opens at Hill Street Theatre on August 15 and is a celebration of

singers down the ages.

The women she honours tend not to be the operatic, Callas-type Divas,

whose exoticism was that she was the only prima donna of her time who

wasn't the size of a small bungalow. Alyson's tribute to the art of the

chanteuse celebrates a more demotic breed -- the women the people loved

because they brought more than melody to their songs, women who poured

their hearts out and bared the souls on stage.

Piaf, the Parisian Sparrow; Judy Garland, the girl all the guys would

die protecting but who couldn't be protected from herself; the ageless

and mysterious Deitrich; the brave and defiant Lotte Lenya -- Alyson

does them all, and does them with the same kind of passion and

conviction.

If you want to feel the hairs on the back of your neck lift once again

to Non Je Ne Regrette RRRRien, or Weill's I'm A Stranger Here Myself,

then you could do worse than listen to a singer who is bound to hit the

national big time soon. This show is about women who cared and who dared

to show it. So does Alyson -- and it shows.