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King of Scotland

Tron Theatre, Glasgow
3 stars
Now we're apparently living in the early days of a new golden age
following last week's Holyrood election, one could be forgiven for
presuming this revival of Iain Heggie's solo play to be some knowing
gem of political satire. Especially with well-k'ent funny guy Jonathan
Watson playing a character called Tommy, a man blessed with near
pathological delusions of grandeur. As it is, Heggie's Glasgow-accented
tale of ordinary madness adapted freely from Gogol is far cleverer than
that.

Watson's Tommy is one of the great unwashed, twenty-eight years
unemployed and residing lovelessly in a hard to let high-rise on the
less well-scrubbed side of the city. As a test case for a box-ticking
bureaucracy's attempts to massage the dole queue down to size, Tommy is
given a call centre job, where he eavesdrops on talking dogs who write
gossipy little notes to each other inbetween eyeing up the boss's
daughter. As his fantasies grow ever more extravagant, Tommy's kingdom,
alas, seems as doomed as all the glad-handing politicos who believe
they’re holding court in some promised land.

Like one of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads series transplanted out of the
suburbs and into a more scatologically and geographically grubbier
neighbourhood, Heggie has chiselled out a bleak little scenario in his
own production for the Glasgow Actors company. Despite Heggie's
typically sweary stream of one-liners, it moves slowly, with each
phrase lent a street-smart weight that only those governed by visiting
times can fully comprehend. As Watson's painfully hangdog Tommy moves
from being a quietly menacing but harmless bam to a full-on care in the
community case, this dryly observed study of political and social
disenfranchisement appears troublingly telling.

The Herald, May 11th 2011

ends

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