Skip to main content

The Incredible Adventures of See Thru Sam

Tron Theatre, Glasgow
4 stars
Heroes and villains mean everything when you’re a teenager, especially 
one who’s living in a world of his own like Sam. Sam used to be 
invisible, but once his mum and dad prove to be thoroughly mortal in a 
car crash, he loses those powers, and starts to be noticed. Even so, as 
Sam tells the audience his not so secret origin from the off he has a 
destiny to fulfil.

Or so it seems in Johnny McKnight’s fantastical rites of passage 
strip-cartoon adventure, in which Sam, his side-kick best pal Walrus, 
and maybe, just maybe his very own super girl Violet take on the world. 
In Sam’s head, this comes in the shape of evil genius Uncle Herbie and 
Violet’s bullying boyfriend. The power of the imagination can only take 
a small-town school-boy so far, it seems, no matter how high Sam is 
aiming.

McKnight’s own production for Random Accomplice takes an array of comic 
book idioms and brings them to life via a set of meticulously timed 
animations which are projected behind the action, illustrating it as 
Sam tells his doomed tale. Such quick-fire displays by animator Jamie 
Macdonald and video designer Kim Beveridge on Lisa Sangster’s set 
allows an insight into Sam’s mind that makes total sense of James 
Mackenzie and Julie Brown flitting between roles in an instant.

There’s a potty-mouthed gallows humour in McKnight’s script that lifts 
things beyond sentiment in a powerfully observed study of adolescent 
angst. As Sam reaches for the stars, unable to reconcile himself with 
real life, McKnight has dreamt up an awfully big adventure worth taking 
the leap for.

The Herald, September 24th 2012

ends

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

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) ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Edinburgh Rocks – The Capital's Music Scene in the 1950s and Early 1960s

Edinburgh has always been a vintage city. Yet, for youngsters growing up in the shadow of World War Two as well as a pervading air of tight-lipped Calvinism, they were dreich times indeed. The founding of the Edinburgh International Festival in 1947 and the subsequent Fringe it spawned may have livened up the city for a couple of weeks in August as long as you were fans of theatre, opera and classical music, but the pubs still shut early, and on Sundays weren't open at all. But Edinburgh too has always had a flipside beyond such official channels, and, in a twitch-hipped expression of the sort of cultural duality Robert Louis Stevenson recognised in his novel, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a vibrant dance-hall scene grew up across the city. Audiences flocked to emporiums such as the Cavendish in Tollcross, the Eldorado in Leith, The Plaza in Morningside and, most glamorous of all due to its revolving stage, the Palais in Fountainbridge. Here the likes of Joe Loss and Ted Heath broug...
2 comments
Read more

Carla Lane – The Liver Birds, Mersey Beat and Counter Cultural Performance Poetry

Last week's sad passing of TV sit-com writer Carla Lane aged 87 marks another nail in the coffin of what many regard as a golden era of TV comedy. It was an era rooted in overly-bright living room sets where everyday plays for today were acted out in front of a live audience in a way that happens differently today. If Lane had been starting out now, chances are that the middlebrow melancholy of Butterflies, in which over four series between 1978 and 1983, Wendy Craig's suburban housewife Ria flirted with the idea of committing adultery with successful businessman Leonard, would have been filmed without a laughter track and billed as a dramady. Lane's finest half-hour highlighted a confused, quietly desperate and utterly British response to the new freedoms afforded women over the previous decade as they trickled down the class system in the most genteel of ways. This may have been drawn from Lane's own not-quite free-spirited quest for adventure as she moved through h...
Post a Comment
Read more