Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
4 stars
“You can’t say no if you’re a hero,” says Danskin, the alcoholic father in Kenny Lindsay’s play, which opens this double bill of one-act works for the second of the Traverse/National Theatre of Scotland Debuts season. Danskin, played by a revelatory Andy Gray, is talking to his son, Lorn, still in thrall to his father’s flights of mythological fancy involving Finn MacCool and which inspire imaginary adventures of their own. Once Scott Fletcher’s Lorn sees through the yarns, however, all that’s left is a self-pitying bum drinking his way to death.
In Andy Duffy’s Nasty, Brutish and Short, which follows, child-hood has been equally ripped asunder, as James Young’s homeless teenager Luke and Ashley Smith’s single mum Mary Jane turn up on the doorstep of Luke’s brother Jim seeking shelter. Luke’s not long out of a mental ward, and Martin Docherty’s Jim, who the title of the play could easily refer to, isn’t helping. Gun in hand, he proceeds to take everything he can, by force if necessary.
Both plays are unremittingly bleak, with little let-up in their depiction of lost children attempting to find their way home. Where Lindsay offers hope of sorts in his wordy elegy to a big, pathetic, wounded bear of a man, Duffy’s psychologically scarred
post-Welshian landcape offers none. Dominic Hill’s production stays unflinchingly true to the over-riding grimness played out on Naomi Wilkinson’s detritus-littered set, all bin-bags and boxes in the first play, stripped to a sunken pool of even more domestic chaos in the second. By the end, it’s hard not to feel drained by these powerful but distressing cries from some very dark places.
The Herald, November 10th 2008
ends
4 stars
“You can’t say no if you’re a hero,” says Danskin, the alcoholic father in Kenny Lindsay’s play, which opens this double bill of one-act works for the second of the Traverse/National Theatre of Scotland Debuts season. Danskin, played by a revelatory Andy Gray, is talking to his son, Lorn, still in thrall to his father’s flights of mythological fancy involving Finn MacCool and which inspire imaginary adventures of their own. Once Scott Fletcher’s Lorn sees through the yarns, however, all that’s left is a self-pitying bum drinking his way to death.
In Andy Duffy’s Nasty, Brutish and Short, which follows, child-hood has been equally ripped asunder, as James Young’s homeless teenager Luke and Ashley Smith’s single mum Mary Jane turn up on the doorstep of Luke’s brother Jim seeking shelter. Luke’s not long out of a mental ward, and Martin Docherty’s Jim, who the title of the play could easily refer to, isn’t helping. Gun in hand, he proceeds to take everything he can, by force if necessary.
Both plays are unremittingly bleak, with little let-up in their depiction of lost children attempting to find their way home. Where Lindsay offers hope of sorts in his wordy elegy to a big, pathetic, wounded bear of a man, Duffy’s psychologically scarred
post-Welshian landcape offers none. Dominic Hill’s production stays unflinchingly true to the over-riding grimness played out on Naomi Wilkinson’s detritus-littered set, all bin-bags and boxes in the first play, stripped to a sunken pool of even more domestic chaos in the second. By the end, it’s hard not to feel drained by these powerful but distressing cries from some very dark places.
The Herald, November 10th 2008
ends
Comments