Skip to main content

My Romantic History

Tron Theatre, Glasgow
4 stars
If one's memory plays rose-tinted tricks, as D.C. Jackson's extended
'non-rom-com' suggests, then this speedy revival of a work first seen
during the 2010 Edinburgh Festival Fringe appears now to be this most
wilfully adolescent writer's coming of age play. Tom, the hero of
Jackson's yarn, is a feckless and somewhat gormless rake who finds
himself thrown together in the Friday night sack with Amy, a just-met
colleague from his new office job. Like the responsible adult he isn't,
Tom, still carrying a torch for his first schoolboy crush, tries to
make-believe nothing ever happened. But in a world where drunken sex is
“smashin'!”, there are two sides to every story, and the play's
stylistic back-flip so we see things from Amy's point of view shows she
has history too.

All of this may have been textually intact last year, but Jemima
Levick's new production for Borderline seems infinitely less madcap and
much more equal in its depiction of thirty-something singletons on the
verge of finally growing up. The result, as Jackson's initial barrage
of baroque one-liners, internal monologues and inappropriate touching
moves onto second base, is a far subtler evocation of the dating and
mating game than Jackson's original template.

As Garry Collins' Tom and Jessica Tomchak's Amy share their thoughts
with the audience, aided by Katrina Bryan's hippy chick Sasha, My
Romantic History most resembles the sort of soft-centred sex comedy the
swinging sixties were flooded with. As Tom and Amy come to terms with
the consequences of getting in what used to be known as the family way,
such an old-fashioned moral tale is a refreshingly rare experience.

The Herald, September 15th 2011

ends

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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) ...

Myra Mcfadyen - An Obituary

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...

Andrew Midgley obituary

Born October 26th 1965 Died October 28th 2010 Andrew Midgley, who has died of a heart attack during a session in a Musselburgh gym aged forty-five, didn’t look like a pop star. Neither did this most garrulously playful of raconteurs particularly enjoy talking about his brief time in the charts during the early 1990s. Yet, while there was far more to this most singular of autodidacts, as one half of club-dance duo Cola Boy, Midgley caught the pop-rave zeitgeist with appearances on Top of the Pops performing the band’s infectiously catchy top ten hit, Seven Ways To Love. Even here, however, just as he would later apply diligence and care behind the scenes as a sub-editor on the Edinburgh Evening News, creating two of the funniest websites on the planet or managing an award-winning comedian, the man nicknamed ‘Boy Naughty’ preferred to stay in the background, allowing former Wham! backing singer turned Radio Two DJ Janey Lee Grace to bask in the day-glo spotlight of the period. Mid...