Charlie Sonata (Lyceum: 29 April – 13 May ’17)

Sandy Grierson as Chick. Lauren Grace as Audrey.
Photos: Drew Farrell.

“You have to wonder: tragedy or comedy .. or, better, a car crash of the two?”

There’s been a road accident. One casualty, a 17 year old girl, is in a coma. Relatives and friends are gathered around her hospital bed for what could well be a long and awful night. Wait up! There’s a fabulous tousled fairy godmother with LED High Top shoes on. They’re flashing blue, which figures, but you have to wonder: tragedy or comedy .. or, better, a car crash of the two? So, bring on the dispassionate Narrator (Robbie Gordon), in neat suit and waistcoat, and pay attention. Lots of it.

Here is a story of a sleeping beauty – arguably the Sleeping Beauty – and of three pals from Uni’, of Mumsnet, soft play, mental health and booze. And there’s no stopping it: one hour and fifty five minutes with no break, just a red telephone box sliding on and off, establishing a line between London and Scotland, holding the line open between 1974 and 1994. Chick, Prince Charlie Sonata III, walks the line, unsteadily, with whisky in his grip bag and love in his heart and Neil Young’s Needle and the Damage Done (1972) on his lips.

You cannot help but love Chick in return. For a start, he read English rather than Law at Stirling; he’s also selfless, trusting and honest, and … completely wrecked to the point of offering earnest and lucid advice about alcohol consumption to a 13 year old. See Sandy Grierson in the role and you see a fallen saint: downcast, stooping, shabby, ‘a disgrace’, who may have given up on hope and faith but never on charity.

Granny in Douglas Maxwell’s Yer Granny is a gleeful barking grotesque in carpet slippers in a tenement. It’s contained comic strip Broons territory. In Charlie Sonata, directed by Matthew Lenton, Maxwell puts wasted innocence out there and as a drama it’s immediately more troublesome, more responsible. Where’s emergency care when you need it? Not with consultant surgeon Mr Ingram (Barnaby Power), who has forgotten the name of his patient. Try the drunk in the pub opposite. “Where’s your adult?” is one (funny) call; “Can this be right?” is another, the Narrator’s more insistent appeal to an audience looking for help between the shifting scenes.

It’s inventive and knowing and addled but I liked it, not least because of the play’s sincere attention to youth and to growing up. Chick made a mess of it. ‘Why?’ goes unanswered. His bladdered time in London is abject and you will wince at the cockney creatures who prey on him. Kinder, but not kind enough to invite Chick to their wedding, are Gary (Kevin Lennon) and Kate. Gary is the lawyer, a happier student than he is a bullied lawyer. Kate (Kirsten McLean) is not at all sure that she has got her parenting sorted. Her daughter, Audrey (Lauren Grace), is the RTA casualty that Chick would save, and quite right too as she’s fun, quick, and charming. Jackson (Robbie Jack), the handsome third of the Stirling Uni’ trio, reckons that as time folds in on itself, you’re much better off living in the 60s, even though it’s the 90s. Hence, no doubt, why he’s ended up owning Castleland, a children’s play centre.

Sandy Grierson as Chick with Meg Fraser as Meredith.

Then there’s Meredith (Meg Fraser), all mascara and running lights below the tutu, and banter. She has ‘history’ as well – all too naughty and recent in the case of the Latvian choreographer – but she’s a kindred soul for Chick. And she brings with her the land of faery and make-believe and shimmer (brilliantly, momentarily, visualised by designer Ana Inés Jabares-Pita) where – in Chick’s words – “if there’s love, the thorns will part”. Go see for yourselves.