Pitlochry Festival
Theatre
Three stars
When Tony Roper wrote
his 1950s-set comedy more than a quarter of a century ago, it was his
experience as an actor he brought to it rather than a rarefied
literary sensibility. Yet his yarn about four women putting their
dirty washing out to dry in a public steam room on Hogmanay is as
plotless as Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot, which was famously
described as a play where 'nothing happens twice.' Like Godot,
however, there is a lot more going on here, and not just via both
plays' love affair with music hall.
As with Beckett's
existential double act of Vladimir and Estragon, Roper's women are
terminally optimistic co-dependents in search of a future. Where
Beckett's universe is vague and zen-like, Roper's is rooted in a
sense of fast-fading community where a sense of sisterhood is slowly
trickling down the class scale. As Ken Alexander's revival makes
clear, Roper's play is essentially a set of comic routines, which,
punctuated by David Anderson's songs, never fails to tap into
something that goes beyond cosy nostalgia to something deeper.
This is reflected in
the performances, with Jenny Lee's Mrs Culfeathers less doddery than
how she is sometimes played, while, at the opposite end of the age
scale, Helen McAlpine's Doreen seems more street-smart and less
naïve. Julie Coombe's Magrit and Janette Foggo's Dolly are similarly
fused with a battle-weary common touch that fires all their banter.
As the sole representative of the male species, Alan McHugh captures
Andy's decline from cocksure swagger to rubber-legged drunk with Max
Wall-like abandon in a production that's worth the ticket price for
the Galloway's mince routine alone.
The Herald, November 1st 2013
ends
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