The Arches, Glasgow
4 stars
Under a street-lamp outside the nurses home, one more boy meets girl story is about to meet its curfew. Unless, that is, the Boy, all nervous jabber and late-night intentions, can smuggle the Girl, not quite as innocent as she looks, back to his bed-sit in all male digs ruled by his feisty Italian land-lady. Once installed, as the young would-be lovers skirt around the Boy’s solitary chair and a broken radio en route to the single bed, a great deal of talking ensues.
Such is the set-up in this second play in The Arches season of previously unperformed stage works by novelist James Kelman. As the first piece of drama he ever wrote, it stands alongside his early short stories as a meat and two veg dissection of every-day discourse between strangers. Both parties have vocal tics; he the transatlantic “Goddamn” acquired from hard-boiled American fiction, while the permanently amused questioning of the Girl’s “Excuse me?” is her defence.
David McKay’s production draws out an exquisite pair of performances from Brian Ferguson and Danielle Stewart. Ferguson’s Boy talks ten to the dozen to avoid actually saying anything, while Stewart’s Girl, though not nearly as well written, and at times little more than a foil for The Boy’s verbal splurges, is equally charming.
Beyond the courting, again as with Kelman’s stories, an underlying political commentary filters through. The presence of a Glasgow Boy in an English town portrays the loneliness of migrant workers in a way Fassbinder’s 1970s films explored, while the couple’s restricted living arrangements point up how social barriers stifle intimacy much as in Tennessee Williams’ flop-house-set miniatures. Kelman’s blue-collar romance is much more than a flashback to dark times.
The Herald, November 12th 2007
ends
4 stars
Under a street-lamp outside the nurses home, one more boy meets girl story is about to meet its curfew. Unless, that is, the Boy, all nervous jabber and late-night intentions, can smuggle the Girl, not quite as innocent as she looks, back to his bed-sit in all male digs ruled by his feisty Italian land-lady. Once installed, as the young would-be lovers skirt around the Boy’s solitary chair and a broken radio en route to the single bed, a great deal of talking ensues.
Such is the set-up in this second play in The Arches season of previously unperformed stage works by novelist James Kelman. As the first piece of drama he ever wrote, it stands alongside his early short stories as a meat and two veg dissection of every-day discourse between strangers. Both parties have vocal tics; he the transatlantic “Goddamn” acquired from hard-boiled American fiction, while the permanently amused questioning of the Girl’s “Excuse me?” is her defence.
David McKay’s production draws out an exquisite pair of performances from Brian Ferguson and Danielle Stewart. Ferguson’s Boy talks ten to the dozen to avoid actually saying anything, while Stewart’s Girl, though not nearly as well written, and at times little more than a foil for The Boy’s verbal splurges, is equally charming.
Beyond the courting, again as with Kelman’s stories, an underlying political commentary filters through. The presence of a Glasgow Boy in an English town portrays the loneliness of migrant workers in a way Fassbinder’s 1970s films explored, while the couple’s restricted living arrangements point up how social barriers stifle intimacy much as in Tennessee Williams’ flop-house-set miniatures. Kelman’s blue-collar romance is much more than a flashback to dark times.
The Herald, November 12th 2007
ends
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