Kings Theatre,
Edinburgh
3 stars
It may be fifteen years
since Pauline Quirke and Linda Robson last regularly graced the small
screen as Essex siblings Sharon and Tracey in the long-running
sit-com about a pair of convicts wives, but, judging by this stage
play that picks up their story, their common touch is still held
looked on with affection. As is too Sharon and Tracey's man-eating
neighbour Dorian, played with Medusa-haired abandon by Lesley Joseph.
While Sharon and Tracey
are still living together in a nouveau-riche fly-by-bight existence,
much has changed. Tracey's son is now sixteen, and his serial
jailbird dad is seemingly reduced to ashes. When the pair are
summonsed to an old people's care home by Dorian, the trio are
reunited in an unlikely plot framed around the death of an elderly
resident. In the mist of all this come sly contemporary nudges about
police corruption, tabloid sensationalism, the riots, references to
both Cameron and Blair, as well as the reality TV show they
accidentally sired, all undercut with a stream of all-girls-together
innuendo..
Beyond this, at its
sharply observed comic best this show is saying something about the
changing social mores of an aspirant working class, about
dysfunctional families, and about ageing (dis)gracefully. All this is
undermined by an ending that looks more Cell Block H than anything,
which may be the fault of over-egging things by having four of the TV
show's original writers – Gary Lawson and John Phelps, and Laurence
Marks and Maurice Gran – penning the script for Simon James Green's
production. In the end, this doesn't matter. The audience recognise
themselves in Sharon, Tracey, Dorian and all their failings, and
that's what counts.
The Herald, April 11th 2013
ends
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