Cottier Theatre
3 stars
Hell, as anyone who has ever encountered the closed-ranks sorority of a
twenty-first century sisterhood who see a Sex and the City DVD box set
as a lifestyle choice, really does hath no fury like a woman scorned.
So it goes in Des Dillon's rough and not always ready adaptation of
his own novel, revived here by the shoestring Goldfish Theatre
following the play's big-stage debut at Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum
Theatre in 200? It opens in the living room of a distraught Caroline on
her knees cutting up her adulterous husband Bobby's clothes. Bobby's
dumped her for nineteen year old glamourpuss Stacie Gracie, and
Caroline is out for revenge. With her five sisters, Ma and radio ham
Granny forming a vodka-fuelled coven gathered round a pentagram taped
onto a rug, these good Catholic girls turned Macbeth's crones times two
are aiming to give Bobby a hex enduction to die for.
What Dillon has done is grab the one-time zeitgeist of supernatural
teen drama a la Charmed, throw it into a back-street west of Scotland
pop cultural cauldron as if early Shameless had been forced to
relocate, and stirred effusively in what is effectively an extended hen
night sketchbook.
With a second half based largely around a not entirely relevant
all-girls-together humiliation of the new priest on the block by Carmen
Pieraccini's goth provocateur Donna, John Binnie's production errs
towards the madcap without ever quite going far enough. In what is
essentially a comedy of behaviour over plot there simply aren't enough
laughs to sustain something that craves a Glasgow Pavilion sized
audience to make it live.
The Herald, April 11th 2011
ends
3 stars
Hell, as anyone who has ever encountered the closed-ranks sorority of a
twenty-first century sisterhood who see a Sex and the City DVD box set
as a lifestyle choice, really does hath no fury like a woman scorned.
So it goes in Des Dillon's rough and not always ready adaptation of
his own novel, revived here by the shoestring Goldfish Theatre
following the play's big-stage debut at Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum
Theatre in 200? It opens in the living room of a distraught Caroline on
her knees cutting up her adulterous husband Bobby's clothes. Bobby's
dumped her for nineteen year old glamourpuss Stacie Gracie, and
Caroline is out for revenge. With her five sisters, Ma and radio ham
Granny forming a vodka-fuelled coven gathered round a pentagram taped
onto a rug, these good Catholic girls turned Macbeth's crones times two
are aiming to give Bobby a hex enduction to die for.
What Dillon has done is grab the one-time zeitgeist of supernatural
teen drama a la Charmed, throw it into a back-street west of Scotland
pop cultural cauldron as if early Shameless had been forced to
relocate, and stirred effusively in what is effectively an extended hen
night sketchbook.
With a second half based largely around a not entirely relevant
all-girls-together humiliation of the new priest on the block by Carmen
Pieraccini's goth provocateur Donna, John Binnie's production errs
towards the madcap without ever quite going far enough. In what is
essentially a comedy of behaviour over plot there simply aren't enough
laughs to sustain something that craves a Glasgow Pavilion sized
audience to make it live.
The Herald, April 11th 2011
ends
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