Right Now (Traverse: 19 April – 7 May ’16)

Posted in 4*, Rated: Unrated, Theatre, Traverse by Alan Brown

Photos: Helen Murray

“Funny and clever, disturbing and salacious”

A Traverse Theatre Company, Theatre Royal Bath Ustinov Studio and Bush Theatre co-production.

Ben is a junior doctor. He and Alice have been together for seven years and their work/life balance is screwed. As it happens, so far so familiar. Right now they’ve been in their new flat for six months, have just got the baby’s room to do, and things will get better. Only they don’t. Instead neighbours Juliette and Gilles and their son François come right on in from across the hall ….. Meet the Fockers from Quebec, everyone: with a ‘u’, inappropriate, out of order and way, way, out of bounds.

You watch your step in this pressing and uncomfortable comedy. You’re never too sure what’s underfoot or where it’s going. There’s a godawful squeaky toy behind the sofa and half a glass of red on the floor. ‘Beware’ should travel around the set like LED advertising at a sports ground. Beware Juliette with her penchant for flashing her knickers; beware Gilles’ prurient touch and tongue; beware François’s lacerating commentary. “They’re a bit odd” is Alice’s bang on estimate. “I like them” is Ben’s disastrous opinion. It’s funny and clever, disturbing and salacious, and very well performed.

Michael Boyd directs this production, which is a cracking compliment to French-Canadian writer Catherine-Anne Toupin. It looks clean, like a Farrow and Ball paint job by designer Madeleine Girling where the quality of the finish should never be in question. All the more effective, then, when a kind of moral distemper takes hold and it all gets corrupted, goes off-colour and becomes dubious. Guy Williams as Gilles is absolutely loathsome because his seduction of Alice is like a pet research project. He also, incidentally, proves that a black roll neck jumper and brown jacket are about as louche as it gets. Maureen Beattie, ever the mistress of the bewitching voice, is Juliette the mother temptress, against whom all resistance is futile. Just sticking a plaster on Dr. Ben’s hand makes him go weak at the knees. François – jittery and wacky by Dyfan Dwfor – may be appalled by his parents’ behaviour but is just as complicit.

Lindsey Campbell as Alice

If Toupin isolates a character, it’s Alice. The plot would push her under but she won’t go. Listen up in scene 5 for the psycho pairing of Ben (Sean Biggerstaff) and ‘Benny’ (that would be Biggerstaff too) but Alice stays there, screaming for help really. Lindsey Campbell has to do grieving and dirty dancing and horribly vulnerable all at once, which is why the sex is so desperate. It’s a class act and I think is what the show’s flier describes as traumatic, ‘teasing and thrilling’.

Right Now is as billed. It’s edgy, imminent, and contemporary, which makes it kind of Shakespearean: François as Feste maybe, Alice as the abused and distraught Ophelia; Juliette becomes Lady Macbeth, who has given suck, etc. Weird.

Reviewer: Alan Brown (Seen 19 April)

See Right Now at the Traverse

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13Apr2016

Ring Road (Traverse: 12 – 16 April ’16)

Posted in 4*, Rated: Outstanding, Theatre, Traverse by Alan Brown

Martin Donaghy as Mark and Angela Darcy as Lisa.
Photo. Traverse theatre.

“Both actors perform brilliantly in a small space (and on a narrow bed)”

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars Outstanding

Fifth and last in this Spring season of A Play, A Pie and a Pint.

It was the prickly cactus that did it, that brought to mind Love’s Labour’s Lost and fun puns on pricks, butts and horns. Mark notices it by the Reception desk of the hotel that’s just off the ring road. He reckons he’s there for sex (oh, not the archery then) and he’s right. Lisa does want him but it’s more his sperm than his good self that she’s targeting. She desires a baby while Mark just fancies the pants off his teacher sister-in-law. Ouch!

Anita Vettesse has written a painfully entertaining comedy and director Johnny McKnight does indeed make the pants fly off the bed. Ring Road is frisky, certainly, but it is also sensitive to what Lisa is feeling. She is 40 years old, has ‘grown to love’ her husband, but is still without a child. The pressure is on big time.

A late afternoon’s delight via Dayuse.com might be all very well but Lisa (Angela Darcy) sees Mark (Martin Donaghy) more as a ‘facilitator’, which he’s not best pleased about. He is even less keen on the idea when brother Paul (a wry, downcast voice-over from Robbie Jack), Lisa’s husband, joins them by being put ‘on speaker’. The two brothers are plumbers, sharing the same van, rather than the same women but it’s still odds-on that the dismissive reference to Screwfix is deliberate.

Mark’s spattered overalls and rigger boots look strange in the tidy, unexciting hotel room and he knows that the whole situation is just not right. Twin beds are bad enough – and that ‘art’ on the wall!- but the twitchy tension is the real passion killer. Lisa, in particular and unsurprisingly, is a bundle of nerves. At worst Mark is confused, but she is probably more conflicted at the end than at the beginning, which is touching and sadly credible.

Both actors perform brilliantly in a small space (and on a narrow bed). Donaghy does “For fuck’s sake” as baffled, happy, hurt and kind all at once, while Darcy is no less expressive, just more couth and desperate. The fact that Ring Road is also very funny is down to the quality of Vettesse’s writing.

Reviewer: Alan Brown (Seen 12 April)

Go to Ring Road at the Traverse.

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8Apr2016

The Silent Treatment (Traverse: 7 – 9 April ’16)

Posted in 3*, Theatre, Traverse by Alan Brown

Photo: Lung Ha Theatre

“A lot of barmy mischief making”

Editorial Rating: 3 Stars

Lung Ha Theatre Company is a leading theatre company for people with learning disabiities, in Scotland and internationally.

Shout it out: Lung Ha bucks trend! By the latest UK stats worker output per hour is down; well, not when you put 21 actors on stage and keep them acting all the while. All the more testing, when there’s little to no dialogue in Douglas Maxwell’s script of stage directions.

The Silent Treatment subjects its cast to keeping shtum – and alert. For the most part it is full on music and sound (by M J McCarthy) that cues the action. After Lung Ha’s Thingummy Bob with Cliff and The Shadows I had my old money on ‘Silence is Golden’ for some signature backing; but, no, that was 1967 and this play needs mobiles, scratchcards, emoticons and a chainsaw. Still, The Tremeloes’ lyrics have something relevant to say: here’s the second verse,

Talkin’ is cheap …
How could she tell? He deceived her so well.
Pity she’ll be the last one to know.

Billie (Nicola Tuxworth) thinks she has the secret to end all secrets. In fact, it’s her boyfriend (Stephan Tait) who’s got it and she won’t find it out until the end, when she will be speechless. In the meantime Billie goes with her little secret and sets out to try and wreck the sponsored silence that is being held to raise money for her mum, who’s in and out of hospital. Why would she do such a thing? That’s her secret and she’s not telling.

And, of course, no-one else is saying anything. The writing on the blackboard spells it out: SPONSORED SILENCE. No Phones (ignored), No Sleeping (impossible), No Eating (not when there’s a packet of Penguin biscuits around), No Knitting (didn’t see any), wheel noises and body noises don’t count (fair enough). It is the irrepressible Kenneth Ainslie as Toby who has real trouble with the rules but even he doesn’t speak.

Billie finds a helper in Stacey (Emma Clark) and the two of them, in and out of disguises and of the windows, do a lot of barmy mischief making under the stern nose of dominie Kitty (Kay Ann Jacobs); but it’s the four strong building crew (with foreman Mark Howie unmistakeably in charge) in high-vis vests and bowlers who do the heavy lifting, paying no attention whatsoever to Kitty’s gong.

The audience did not want to break the silence either. Hearty laughter seemed somehow disrespectful to Maria Oller’s close direction and the disciplined work of the performers on stage. With one great, if unholy, exception, the ingenious visual gags were met with appreciative chuckles rather than guffaws , and so when the end came – when it blossomed is actually more accurate – the applause was for hard study and successful work rather than for easy laughs.

Reviewer: Alan Brown (Seen 7 April)

Go to The Silent Treatment and to Lung Ha Theatre Company

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6Apr2016

Neither God Nor Angel (Traverse 5 – 9 April ’16)

Posted in 4*, Rated: Unrated, Theatre, Traverse by Alan Brown

Jimmy Chisholm as James VI and Gavin Wright as William.
Photo: Leslie Black

“To an eloquent vocabulary!”

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars

4th in this Spring’s season of a Play, a Pie and a Pint.

Union (2014), Tim Barrow’s second play, was full of the joys of the Referendum campaign – vigorous, disputatious, even romantic. Neither God Nor Angel, his third, is not ‘Union the prequel’ (by a century), but more of a light amuse-bouche to that earlier rich and hearty fare. This is a waggish two-hander, chummier, a pawky chamber piece.

It is an entertaining fact that James VI, King of Scotland, must have spent some part of the night of April 4th 1603 in Holyrood wondering what it was going to be like to be James I of England (& Ireland) to boot. He was away to London the following morning. Did he blow hot and cold about the whole enterprise? The Incarnation probably sprang to the mind of this godly, seriously literate and absolute monarch who, in 1598 and blessedly free of irony, wrote of ‘the Reciprock and Mutuall Dutie betwixt a free King and his naturall Subiectes’. Let there then steal upon the scene, for the purposes of comic wrangling over glasses of good Rhenish wine, one such subject.

Levity, clearly, is heaven-sent. Enter gawky William (Gavin Wright) to cheek and cheer his King, who has been in peevish sorts. James (Jimmy Chisholm) welcomes – and would embrace in all innocence – the impertinent company of a serving man. Better William, any day, than those ‘devious bastards, the bankers, with their velvet draped bollocks’; and so the toast, raised by His Majesty, ‘To an eloquent vocabulary!’

William speaks Leith and James, crowned at thirteen months, speaks privilege with moments of dainty Morningside. “Would you ken where yon bottle is hid?” might well be an habitual question in Hermitage Gardens but the interesting parts, in amidst the humour, is the forgotten or unfamiliar history: Royal pal Esmé Stewart is pined for; recall of Gowrie and the Ruthven raid shakes the King; his wife, Anne of Denmark, is cherished; and William is sacked for spilling wine on John Ramsay’s silk doublet, which could have happened. I liked all this, almost as much as the use of quill on paper.

It’s a good title, Neither God Nor Angel, provided you can accept that the king’s a man for a’ that, which he ain’t really. Director Ryan Dewar and his two actors do very well with this pithy play of make-believe.

Reviewer: Alan Brown (Seen 5 April )

Go to Neither God Nor Angel at the Traverse

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1Apr2016

Uncanny Valley (Summerhall: 29 – 31 March) – part of Edinburgh International Science Festival

Posted in 3*, Rated: Nae Bad, Summerhall, Theatre by Steve Griffin

Photo:.Borderline Theatre

“Educational and entertaining, well-worth taking the kids to”

Editorial Rating: 3 Stars: Nae Bad

As a child I was never particularly into science. At school the lessons were boring and didn’t challenge me to think creatively or engage with it in real life situations. Uncanny Valley, however, does both, placing today’s children at the heart of a situation we may well find ourselves in 30 years’ time.

Essentially it’s a show about humans and robots, and the difference between the two. With the world becoming ever more robotic, the subject matter is engaging for audiences of all ages and I certainly learned a thing or two about artificial intelligence and the Turing Test during the performance. While I imagine 9-year-old me might have struggled with some of the concepts and sitting still through some of the longer “lesson” parts, many of the younger audience members seemed to grasp it fairly well and engage in the interactive elements.

As a children’s piece, one can forgive a certain amount of ridiculousness and be able to suspend disbelief to still be able to enjoy the action. Credit goes to the actors for keeping the performance engaging, with boundless energy creating big, bold characters that are instantly relatable. Kirsty Stuart in particular shines as the cut-throat Mayor who’ll stop at nothing to eliminate robots in her town.

I would have liked closer attention paid to the narrative to keep it seamless all the way through: there were quite a few unexplained jumps in time and location in the story, and I never quite believed Ada’s relationship with her adopted parents. In saying that, some of the theatrical elements are very well done: the Turing Test at the end of the show is funny and gripping; the open moral discussion about whether to swerve a car off road and kill a group of chickens to save yourself is very thought-provoking, and I was even able to feel emotional connection with the robot characters of OKAY and SARA, which adds a really nice dimension.

The beginning is a little confusing – I feel that Rob Drummond as facilitator perhaps tries too hard to convey a lot of factual information early on and doesn’t seem as comfortable in parts of audience interaction as I would expect from an experienced TIE professional. These are only small moments throughout the piece though, as on the whole it’s quite slick and professional.

Overall, Uncanny Valley is educational and entertaining, and well-worth taking the kids to, as long as you’re ready for a bit of thinking! Theatrically it is a bit rough around the edges but still full of heart.

Reviewer: Steve Griffin (Seen 31 March)

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1Apr2016

International Waters (Traverse: 30 March – 3 April ’16)

Posted in 3*, Rated: Outstanding, Theatre, Traverse by Alan Brown

Photos: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

“Almost edifying”

Editorial Rating:3 Stars Outstanding

You have to wonder. Fifty minutes into the heaving swell of International Waters when we’re all dramatically well and truly cast off, the fire alarm lights flash red and the theatre is evacuated. It has to be a Fire Exit production. And the prime minister announces that there will be no fire sale of the UK’s steel industry but it could still all go down the pan; which is pretty much where David Leddy’s new play takes us. It’s gut-churning with intent, from programme-as-origami downwards. This is theatre in the raw; its passage probably indigestible without great work by Becky Minto (Design), Nich Smith (Lighting) and Danny Krass (Sound).

For the U-bend see a cabin suite for the super-rich in the bowels of a super-tanker, complete with champagne buffet and karaoke machine. Cheaper accommodation is in assorted containers where you might be stacked next to a tiger or two. It is all rather make-do, rather urgent, for this is the last ship out of London where the banks have really, really, done their mucky worst. It’s safe to assume that the ATMs are empty and that the poor are on the streets and burning porsches. Still, if you have shedloads of ready money you can look good in white linen, enjoy the Moët, do a line of coke, and singalong to doomsday. Unfortunately it turns out that Sarah, Ben, Sophia, and Arian are in the Caliban suite for a less than delightful reason and that their ‘escape’ will end wretchedly. There’s no mage on the bridge to save them or to get them away from each other’s throats … or crotches.

International Waters 2

Down below, gripped by burning cabin fever and flushing itself out, is the fabled 1%: powerful and greedy, vulnerable and unhappy. Sarah (Claire Dargo), Ben (Robin Laing), Sophia (Selina Boyack), and Arian (Lesley Hart) go at it with astonishing abandon, pulling each other’s chains – just to stay with the scatological – and soiling themselves and their values in the process. It’s abject, messy, and ridiculous and yet the acutely angled and allusive content is almost edifying.

Leddy unships a bulk load of issues: rogue algorithms, flagrant wealth, economic migrants, drowned refugees; the paranoid survivalist versus the self-obsessed, #Blessed; Twitter storms, Old Testament retribution and the gospel strains of New Testament promise. This is one crowded ark of a stage, freighted with ideas, that spills more than it holds, deliberately upset by intemperate behaviour, bad language, and scary discordant sound. If the play is dead in the water at its conclusion, it’s not rudderless or overblown, but simply exhausted.

FYI. The show continued after the fire alarm, which says a lot about the quality of the performance and the unlikely integrity of the piece. It is preposterous and explicitly farcical, yet Leddy goes in behind the theatrical facade. He says (see programme note) that he’s also after the romantic sublime. Well, here’s Adele on a comparable course from Rolling in the Deep: “Go ‘head and sell me out and I’ll lay your shit bare.” Nice!

Reviewer: Alan Brown (Seen 30 March)

Go to International Waters at the Traverse and at Fire Exit .

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24Mar2016

Endgame (Bedlam: 22-26 March ’16)

Posted in 4*, Bedlam, Rated: Outstanding, Theatre by Steve Griffin

Thomas Noble as Hamm

“The best student production I’ve seen in quite some time”

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars: Outstanding

One certainly cannot fault the courage of the students at Edinburgh University this year for taking on so many challenging productions, and to even attempt Beckett – whose works so often have age and world-weariness as themes – is admirable. I was lucky enough to spend an entire term studying Beckett at university, under the tutorship of a renowned expert on his works, but even then I worried that my final performance would be a tragic, naïve offering compared to what had gone before.

Beckett certainly isn’t for everyone, and Endgame is a one-act play with a running time of close to 90 minutes that has very little narrative development or real “action”. What is most satisfying about this production is the group’s sensitivity to Beckett’s text. The great man is notoriously particular about how his work should be performed, and Edinburgh University Theatre Company don’t try any tricks or fancy interpretations to make it new or innovative, but instead use subtlety to let the text speak for itself. Finlay McAfee’s masterful direction teases out various interesting repetitions in the dialogue and hints at some of the political undertones, but never makes bold statements or suggestions.

In saying that, this production also doesn’t take itself too seriously – it’s littered with comedic moments, just as Beckett intended, and is a very well-rounded and watchable show. Sarah Brown’s set is simple yet effective, using black and white as a nod to the “game” element, while all other creative elements are in sync to present a cohesive and professional mise-en-scene.

Thomas Noble as Hamm is the centrepiece of the actors – always on stage, centre stage, he commands attention with charisma and gusto. His moments of anger when flinging props aside are powerful, while he shows great contrast in more intimate conversations with Clov. In turn Clov (Michael Hajiantonis) is excellent as the down-trodden servant, whose development in confidence towards the end, extreme physicality and impressive Irish accent all contribute to a commendable performance.

Jennifer Jones is compelling to watch as Nag, with fantastic control over the small movements and expressions she makes inside the bin. Her physicality is exquisite, and her delivery of the tailor story is achingly on point. Antonia Weir is equally captivating and convincing as long-suffering wife Nell.

To me the only thing lacking from this production is a deeper sense of age and timelessness. The action all seemed a little too fresh and perhaps a touch too “performed” for it to be believable as a snapshot of continual drudgery. In saying that, I’d much rather a slight tip in this direction to keep it energetic and engaging rather than veering down the road of self-indulgent dawdling. In all other respects this show is hard to fault, it’s certainly the best student production I’ve seen in quite some time.

Reviewer: Steve Griffin (Seen 23 March)

Go to Endgame at Bedlam Theatre

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22Mar2016

A Play, A Pie and A Pint – Billy (The Days of Howling) (Traverse: 22 – 26 March, ’16)

Posted in 5*, Theatre, Traverse by Steve Griffin

“A dark, eye-opening fable of flawed humans and why they do what they do”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars

On the surface, this could so easily be “Mumsnet: the play”: a tale of a mother passing judgement on the parents of another child that attends the same nursery as her daughter, juxtaposed with an admin worker whose main priorities are arranging for a pinboard to be put up in her office and responding to radio phone-in competitions. But scrape away that layer of shallow prejudice and what lies beneath is a dark, eye-opening fable of flawed humans and why they do what they do.

The play is written almost exclusively as three intertwining monologues, allowing us to understand multiple viewpoints, with rare yet powerful instances of dialogue when the characters’ paths cross. Director Rosie Kellagher shrewdly opts for simple staging throughout, with each character in their own part of the stage, and keeps the action slick, resulting in an engaging performance I couldn’t take my eyes off.

The writing in this piece is very clever, and quite understandably of award-winning quality, in how it teases and develops action throughout. Early on we are led to be on the side of Alice’s Mum in her mission to ensure a child is properly looked after, while Billy’s Dad comes across as the kind of lout we all love to hate. The tensions are clear, but as the action unwinds and we learn more about who’s who and what has led them to where they are, perspectives slowly change, and at the play’s chilling denouement I was left unsure as to who I should feel most sorry for and whether they really had it coming.

Rosalind Sydney displays great depth, power and fragility as the do-goody Alice’s Mum, from her cutting judgements to her exquisite intonation as a heard-it-all-before call centre operative. It’s hard to believe that Anthony Strachan is anything other than the foul-mouthed, donut-eating, wrestling fanatic Billy’s Dad given the integrity of his performance, while Hilary Lyon is a master of deadpan comedy as the Admin Lady. The acting is controlled, consistent and utterly believable from all three.

In saying that, there were a couple of moments when the action didn’t quite ring true and seemed a little far-fetched (an anecdote of spending 20 hours waiting in A&E being one example), while the weight of action seemed to leave one character a little redundant for the second half of this performance. However, on the great scale of things, these are very minor idiosyncrasies to what is on the whole a compelling production.

For a show that’s this energetic, chopping and changing between three stories with such rapidity, you do have to be on your toes to keep up, but it’s absolutely worth it. Get in there quick.

—

Reviewer: Steve Griffin (Seen 22 March)

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THIS REVIEW HAS NOT BEEN SUBEDITED

15Mar2016

A Play, A Pie and A Pint – Some Other Stars (Traverse: 15 – 19 March, ’16)

Posted in 4*, Theatre, Traverse by Steve Griffin

“Gripping until the very end”

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars

There was a real buzz at this, the opening performance of the first in the new season of A Play, A Pie and A Pint at the Traverse Theatre, as audience members of all ages filled the studio – an indicator of the wide appeal the programme has. Opening the batting order is Some Other Stars, which depicts honestly, beautifully and painfully, the journey travelled by a loving couple when one of them, for whatever reason, ends up in a coma.

Performed as two interweaving monologues, Clare Duffy’s script deftly covers a plethora of feelings and thoughts from both sides, from confusion and pain in the early days, through hope, helplessness, boredom and betrayal. The play begins in darkness, with a sizeable monologue from Ian (Martin McCormick) describing what’s going on in his head while in a vegetative state. The discomfort of the darkness and simplicity and repetition of his words work to set a deep and personal tone, drawing us into the obvious conflict of his physical incapability of communicating with his wife, Cath (Kristin Murray).

Once the action gets going it’s quite a pacy affair that is full of dramatic contrasts in perspective that interweave, each seamlessly making way for the next without ever getting bogged down on one idea. Cath’s opening speech is delivered very fast, which on one hand jars against the sensitive, human element of the production, while on the other very ably and stylishly communicates a headful of thoughts that aren’t able to form themselves into cohesive sentences before the next comes along. Perhaps a little too “theatrical” for me, but powerful all the same.

Both McCormick and Murray are very believable in their respective roles, with a command of emotion and tension that makes this play gripping until the very end. While not wholly believable in terms of chemistry as a couple, their energy, pace and variety of emotional intensity are evenly balanced, and that missing spark almost works in their favour in sections where the breakdown in their relationship becomes more apparent.

Yet while the acting is on whole very powerful, I wasn’t convinced by Jonathan Scott’s design which seemed too “artsy” against the very sensitive performance. The use of a hospital bed with a body constructed of plastic bottles and other flotsam certainly represented Ian’s apparent lifelessness, but to me detracted from the integrity of the emotion on display, especially when it was being interacted with. Some of the other design elements also seemed redundant – the table and dolls downstage and the gazebo-like structure didn’t add anything to the production, and I feel that a more stripped back approach, relying on the actors to do the work with their physicality would have aided to the rawness and fragility of the piece. There were moments of this towards the end of the production, where Cath, in desperation straddles her husband in his wheelchair in the hope to get him to feel, which were very moving and required no special effects. It’s a shame this technique was not used more often.

Overall, this is a simple yet moving exploration of a situation none of us ever hopes to be on either side of, presented with real human honesty. Compelling.

—

Reviewer: Steve Griffin (Seen 15 March)

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THIS REVIEW HAS NOT BEEN SUBEDITED

10Mar2016

Angels in America (Bedlam: 8 – 12 March ’16)

Posted in 4*, Bedlam, Rated: Outstanding, Theatre by Alan Brown

Brooks Hudgins as Prior and Emily Deans as Harper
Photos: EUTC

‘A Gay Fantasia on National Themes’

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars: Outstanding

If you think a log cabin Republican is the kind of guy who would fire off a Patriot missile at a low flying angel, that would be way, way off target. And what would be his (her?) Democrat equivalent? I dunno but it might involve tepees and he / she might major in lines like ‘Respect the delicate ecology of your emotions’. You get both sorts on the Bedlam stage this week. Yay!

This is Tony Kushner’s cultural blockbuster of a play from the early 90s: that’s actually two plays, Millenium Approaches and Perestroika, with a runtime – then – of around seven hours. See this EUTC production, ably directed by Liam Rees, and you’re done in just over three hours but you will probably want to know what has had to be cut. (There is the made-for-cable HBO miniseries that might help and you won’t have to suffer the Baltic temperatures of Bedlam, although the scenes in Antarctica might feel familiar.) In the original script there are 67 scenes for two characters and that’s more or less how it all proceeds, two-handers with stand-out monologues for the principals. It’s sharp, witty, political, and yet manages to shade from the domestic to the mythic. Its subtitle, ‘A Gay Fantasia on National Themes’ sets the scene.

To begin with it is 1985, Cats is going strong on Broadway and Ronald Reagan is President. In New York City Prior Walter – latest of the Walters who got off the Mayflower – is getting sick from AIDS and his partner of four years, Louis Ironson, is not coping. Lou works in the same building as Joe Pitt, a legal clerk, who is offered a big move to Washington DC by his powerful associate and friend, Roy Cohn. Joe does not know if he can take the job because his wife, Harper, is popping Valium like there’s no tomorrow. You are never entirely sure how many tomorrows Prior has left, not least when he’s visited by two ancestors in black capes who regard his pestilential condition as entirely befitting a sodomite. Angel wings hang above the stage and at the close a tremendous thrumming heralds the arrival of the ‘Messenger’. In all likelihood the bearer of glad tidings has arrived but there have been angelic voices before and Prior, bless him, has no idea what they’re talking about.

The excellent cast does not leave the stage which works well to impress a sense of full-on, marginally dislocated action. Prior’s sick bed stays up centre throughout. Brooks Hudgins plays the stricken WASP with timing that stings and with biting bittersweet delivery. Abandoned by Louis, he muses on his desperate isolation: it’s a sad joke that his dermatologist is on a [long] vacation in Hawaii and his mother … well, his mother just stays away. Rob Younger as Louis has all the lines and tousled angst of a Woody Allen character. It’s a kind, thoughtful part, full of faltering starts, punctuated by ‘Okay ..’ and ‘Right ..’ as he tries to explain himself. At home, stranded in her Brooklyn apartment, Emily Deans is outstanding as Harper Pitt, managing her depressive state with what amounts to mischievous glee in pyjamas and spotted dressing gown. Andrew Hally as husband Joe has to behave decently against demanding odds and more insuperable than even his Mormon upbringing or his sexuality is the foul mouthed, monster ego of Roy Cohn. The fact that Al Pacino took this part gives you a measure of what Peter Morrison has to do and he does well, lurching from one ghastly judgement to the next upon what’s rotten in the land of the free. It is not at all difficult to realise that Cohn (1927-1986) was a real-life horror show.

Peter Morrison as Roy Cohn

Supporting roles by Meera Munoz Pandya (notably as Belize, onetime drag queen, Prior’s ex-boyfriend and best friend) and by Erica Belton are clearly defined and remarkably effective within the significantly reduced script. The inevitable problem in this half and half version of Angels in America is that the impact of the ‘blockbuster’ cannot be the same as it was when young Americans were all ‘Reagan’s children’. It even predates Friends for heaven’s sake! The angelic chorus gets muffled, as it certainly did up in the rafters of Bedlam. Exhortations to ‘Look up, look up’ did not just baffle Prior Walter. Nevertheless, when ‘Modern Studies’ in many a Scottish high school can still stop at JFK’s assassination and when HIV infection and AIDS simply register as component parts of the Health and Well Being curriculum, this EUTC production is important work.

Reviewer: Alan Brown (Seen 8 March)

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Category Archives: Theatre

Right Now (Traverse: 19 April – 7 May ’16)

“Funny and clever, disturbing and salacious”

Ring Road (Traverse: 12 – 16 April ’16)

“Both actors perform brilliantly in a small space (and on a narrow bed)”

The Silent Treatment (Traverse: 7 – 9 April ’16)

“A lot of barmy mischief making”

Lung Ha Theatre Company is a leading theatre company for people with learning disabiities, in Scotland and internationally.

Neither God Nor Angel (Traverse 5 – 9 April ’16)

“To an eloquent vocabulary!”

Uncanny Valley (Summerhall: 29 – 31 March) – part of Edinburgh International Science Festival

“Educational and entertaining, well-worth taking the kids to”

International Waters (Traverse: 30 March – 3 April ’16)

“Almost edifying”

Endgame (Bedlam: 22-26 March ’16)

“The best student production I’ve seen in quite some time”

A Play, A Pie and A Pint – Billy (The Days of Howling) (Traverse: 22 – 26 March, ’16)

“A dark, eye-opening fable of flawed humans and why they do what they do”

A Play, A Pie and A Pint – Some Other Stars (Traverse: 15 – 19 March, ’16)

“Gripping until the very end”

Angels in America (Bedlam: 8 – 12 March ’16)

‘A Gay Fantasia on National Themes’