Oran Mor, Glasgow
4 stars
Feeling the pressure? If so, you might find a friend in the young man at the heart of writer/director Adrian Osmond’s existential howl of a play. Then again, as he moves from a botched job interview to trying too hard at a party and eventual mental collapse, maybe not. Such social awkwardness is the root of all the man’s problems in this latest contribution to A Play, A Pie And A Pint’s season of lunchtime theatre.
Using a play on words not seen since the self-analytical 60s, the play’s title pretty much tells it how it is. Osmond himself performs his expectation-defying solo script, which concerns the man’s inability to fit in or get on in a world requiring compromise and conformism at every turn. Rather than some monosyllabic mess, however, Osmond’s hero is both hyper-articulate and single-minded to the point of self-destruction. Given half the chance, he might even have ended up as an artist.
Osmond is well-versed in the miniature form via his occasional Sure Shots series of five-minute plays produced by his own SweetScar company. Here he splits proceedings into eight defining scenelets, each of which is bridged by a recorded interior monologue that becomes increasingly, obsessively self-absorbed, a la Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape.
Paddy Cunneen’s production, set to a burbling electronic soundscape, has Osmond shed psychological skins along with clothes in a work that, while not without levity, is a serious structural and dramatic leap into the dark. Osmond proves himself a no-holds-barred performer in a piece which itself goes against the grain of more light-hearted lunchtime fare, putting the naked I under scrutiny enough to leave it thoroughly exposed.
The Herald, May 9th 2007
ends
4 stars
Feeling the pressure? If so, you might find a friend in the young man at the heart of writer/director Adrian Osmond’s existential howl of a play. Then again, as he moves from a botched job interview to trying too hard at a party and eventual mental collapse, maybe not. Such social awkwardness is the root of all the man’s problems in this latest contribution to A Play, A Pie And A Pint’s season of lunchtime theatre.
Using a play on words not seen since the self-analytical 60s, the play’s title pretty much tells it how it is. Osmond himself performs his expectation-defying solo script, which concerns the man’s inability to fit in or get on in a world requiring compromise and conformism at every turn. Rather than some monosyllabic mess, however, Osmond’s hero is both hyper-articulate and single-minded to the point of self-destruction. Given half the chance, he might even have ended up as an artist.
Osmond is well-versed in the miniature form via his occasional Sure Shots series of five-minute plays produced by his own SweetScar company. Here he splits proceedings into eight defining scenelets, each of which is bridged by a recorded interior monologue that becomes increasingly, obsessively self-absorbed, a la Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape.
Paddy Cunneen’s production, set to a burbling electronic soundscape, has Osmond shed psychological skins along with clothes in a work that, while not without levity, is a serious structural and dramatic leap into the dark. Osmond proves himself a no-holds-barred performer in a piece which itself goes against the grain of more light-hearted lunchtime fare, putting the naked I under scrutiny enough to leave it thoroughly exposed.
The Herald, May 9th 2007
ends
Comments