Skip to main content

Jumpy

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh
Four stars

“The best we can expect from life now is avoiding the worst,” says Hilary's man-hungry best friend Frances over a bottle of wine early on in April De Angelis' bittersweet evocation of mid-life crises among women who came of age in the 1970s. Then, Hilary and Frances took advantage of the freedoms afforded by a new wave of feminist thinking, went on day trips to Greenham Common and weren't afraid to become independent women on their own terms. In 2009, when the play is set, Hilary is about to turn fifty, her marriage to Mark is cosy to the point of dull and her about to be sixteen year old daughter Tilly is stropping her way through life in postage stamp size skirts and has taken to letting her monosyllabic boyfriend Josh sleep over.

Cora Bissett's revival of De Angelis' West End hit relocates the action to Kelvinside, and has designer Jean Chan pile the stage sky high with domestic detritus that looks like an explosion that has burst out from Hilary's head. As her mother's ongoing meltdown spirals, Tilly's getting of wisdom becomes increasingly monstrous. In a pair of beautifully nuanced performances, Pauline Knowles and Molly Vevers invest mother and daughter with a vulnerability that flares up into an antagonism that reveals them as emotional flipsides of each other.

With each short scene punctuated by assorted Me Generation classics interspersed with grungier fare that points up the gulf between Hilary and Tilly, the first act ends with a wild dream sequence set to a funereal arrangement of Nirvana's terminally bratty Smells Like Teen Spirit. There is more dance too, when a scene-stealing Gail Watson as Frances attempts a jaw-droppingly inappropriate burlesque number.

With both Frances and Josh' father Roland depicted as actors, the script is peppered with theatrical in-jokes throughout a piece that could easily be carved up into several episodes of award-winning TV dramady. Because, while the assorted scenarios of dysfunctional families depicted are first world problems writ large, it is the everyday middle class ordinariness of them that makes De Angelis' play at times so touching. It does this even as it invites us to laugh at the ongoing ridiculousness of a world where growing up only seems to get harder with age.

The Herald, October 31st 2016

ends

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ron Butlin - The Sound of My Voice

When Ron Butlin saw a man who’d just asked him the time throw himself under a train on the Paris Metro, it was a turning point in how his 1987 novel, The Sound Of My Voice, would turn out. Twenty years on, Butlin’s tale of suburban family man Morris Magellan’s existential crisis and his subsequent slide into alcoholism is regarded as a lost classic. Prime material, then, for the very intimate stage adaptation which opens in the Citizens Theatre’s tiny Stalls Studio tonight. “I had this friend in London who was an alcoholic,” Butlin recalls. “He would go off to work in the civil service in the morning looking absolutely immaculate. Then at night we’d meet, and he’s get mega-blootered, then go home and continue drinking and end up in a really bad state. I remember staying over one night, and he’d emerge from his room looking immaculate again. There was this huge contrast between what was going on outside and what was going on inside.” We’re sitting in a café on Edinburgh’s south sid

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) 1. THE STONE ROSES    Don’t Stop ( Silvertone   ORE   1989) The trip didn’t quite start here for what sounds like Waterfall played backwards on The Stone Roses’ era-defining eponymous debut album, but it sounds

Big Gold Dreams – A Story of Scottish Independent Music 1977-1989

Disc 1 1. THE REZILLOS (My Baby Does) Good Sculptures (12/77)  2. THE EXILE Hooked On You (8/77) 3. DRIVE Jerkin’ (8/77) 4. VALVES Robot Love (9/77) 5. P.V.C. 2 Put You In The Picture (10/77) 6. JOHNNY & THE SELF ABUSERS Dead Vandals (11/77) 7. BEE BEE CEE You Gotta Know Girl (11/77) 8. SUBS Gimme Your Heart (2/78) 9. SKIDS Reasons (No Bad NB 1, 4/78) 10. FINGERPRINTZ Dancing With Myself (1/79)  11. THE ZIPS Take Me Down (4/79) 12. ANOTHER PRETTY FACE All The Boys Love Carrie (5/79)  13. VISITORS Electric Heat (5/79) 14. JOLT See Saw (6/79) 15. SIMPLE MINDS Chelsea Girl (6/79) 16. SHAKE Culture Shock (7/79) 17. HEADBOYS The Shape Of Things To Come (7/79) 18. FIRE EXIT Time Wall (8/79) 19. FREEZE Paranoia (9/79) 20. FAKES Sylvia Clarke (9/79) 21. TPI She’s Too Clever For Me (10/79) 22. FUN 4 Singing In The Showers (11/79) 23. FLOWERS Confessions (12/79) 24. TV21 Playing With Fire (4/80) 25. ALEX FERGUSSON Stay With Me Tonight (1980) 1. THE REZILL