Citizens Theatre, Glasgow 4 stars A week before Valentine’s, and anyone who’s lost faith in the power of everlasting true love should be sent on a blind date to playwright Abi Morgan’s new play. A collaboration with director/choreographers Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett’s Frantic Assembly company, as it charts four decades of marriage between Maggie and Billy via two sets of actors, it cuts through the hearts and flowers to get to the real-politik of a relationship that is a mirror for some, an education for others. Mid-life crises, affairs and seven-year itches are all intact. Morgan’s ongoing fascination with the ageing process follows both her recent National Theatre of Scotland play, 27, and her script about another Maggie for the film, The Iron Lady. Yet in Frantic Assembly’s head, hands and feet, the company’s trademark physical tics elevate her words to somewhere else again. As back-dropped here by Merle Hensel’s stately design, Ian William Galloway and Adam Y
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.