l to r. Lewis Howden, Gerda Stevenson, Simon Donaldson, and Morna Young.
Photo: Kirsty Anderson

“Comic effect knocks against an open coffin on Iona”

Editorial Rating: 3 Stars

Would Samuel Johnson, heroic dictionary maker, essayist, critic, and celebrity wit ever have appeared on ‘Strictly’? Perhaps. He was, after all, prone to nervous shakes and tics and he would have been mercilessly brilliant at discombobulating the judges. Anyhow, in the last of the current season of a Play, a Pie, and a Pint, the big man is in polished boots and plaid and he steps up to a jig and seems to enjoy it.

And verily this is the same Dr Johnson, who noticed that ‘the whole [of Edinburgh] bears some resemblance to the old part of Birmingham’. Writer James Runcie continues his rehabilitation of the arch English nationalist by rowing him thoughtfully and fondly over the sea to Skye (and to Mull and Raasay). A Word with Dr Johnson – at the Traverse in October last year – was about the man, his wife, and his English dictionary; this time (1773) he’s in the boondocks and the heather and the Gaelic. For the proto London-centric it’s an ear-bending peregrination in a land where ‘you have more words than people’, which could well have been its chief attraction.

Lewis Howden plays Johnson sympathetically, of splendid girth and with orotund voice, and with a baffled interest in all things Scottish. An exploration of Fingal’s Cave, lantern in hand, leaves him only dimly enlightened but his enthusiasm for Thomas Braidwood’s school for the deaf and dumb is obviously sincere.  His companion throughout is, of course, the amiable James Boswell (admirable by Simon Donaldson), who treats us to evocative latin from Dunbar’s ‘Lament for the Makars’, whilst guarding his distinguished author friend from the sublime and local peril of being called a bampot.

So then, a pleasing trot through good old Scottish ways ? Runcie even brings on ‘Macbeth’ and the Bonnie Prince, which is fine until their comic effect knocks against an open coffin on Iona and a poem of freedom in earnest pursuit of the Scottish nation. Supporting roles by Gerda Stevenson and Morna Young are amusing and/or tuneful but my distinct impression was of looking in at the tartan themed windows of discount booksellers, The Works, on Princes Street. The learned Dr.’s eye would take in a remaindered copy of his  ‘A Journey to the Western Islands’; he would harrumph, say “I’m deeply obliged”, and move on.

Reviewer: Alan Brown (Seen 1 November)

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Image: Leslie Black

“Funny and searching by turns”

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars

You would not take Claire for a creepy clown. Have there been any sightings in Edinburgh yet? With Halloween around the corner there may well be a few popping up at the window or from behind a wall, which is where Claire comes into her own. She’s the ever so earnest social scientist who doubles as a Super Helpful Person, who just happens to wear a clown mask when she’s out at night looking after people. You could say she looks over them.

Nobody’s laughing at the sinister clown craze, least of all the police, and we shouldn’t laugh at Claire, who has just called them – again; but we do laugh at her, just as the police do, because Morna Pearson’s script makes it all too easy to. Poor Claire with her big round specs and love of chat-defying stats, who’ll never be down the pub after work. But this is the same Claire who notices that (normal) ‘people don’t board themselves up’ unless they’ve been hurt and are vulnerable.

You’ll hear a lot from Claire (Helen MacKay) as she explains herself and her wacky, neighbourly, exploits. She is admirably audible, even from behind the mask. You’ll hear less from Fraser (Andy Clark), not least because of the duct tape across his mouth, but he’s impressive at being incredulous, dumb, and helpless. Unsurprisingly he’s in WTF mode and tries to stay there until he too is affected by Claire’s story. Well, he might be affected, and that’s the point of Pearson’s stinging, interrogatory close.

It is a questioning piece, funny and searching by turns. Who’s the victim here, for one thing, and what’s their space like? Andy is literally bound in his and is pushed around by a young woman, which has to be a valuable experience for him. With Claire it is more complicated. Work is probably the featureless desk, stage left. Home seems to have shut behind her and seems inextricably part of a very unhappy time at school. She sees the empty Buckie bottles and used condoms in the street and it’s all pretty ugly.

There’s tension, of sorts. I saw and heard the opening out and folding up of Claire’s neighbourhood map – with its anti-social ‘hotspots’ – and thought, characteristically, ‘Metaphor-for-Anomie’, which is almost certainly to go too far. Walking on Walls is more interested in seeking kindness than anything else.

Walking on Walls is the third play in the Traverse’s current series of ‘A Play, a Pie, and a Pint’ from Oran Mor, Glasgow.

Reviewer: Alan Brown (Seen 18 October)

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Photos: Helen Murray

“Funny and clever, disturbing and salacious”

Editorial Rating: 4 Stars

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)

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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 )

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