Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
Four stars
They may not have been tram related, but the roadworks blocking the bus
stop on Lothian Road immediately following this fifty-minute 'rapid
response' to the seven-year carry-on that has been the Edinburgh Trams
project spoke volumes about the vagaries of civic planners who
seemingly give little thought to the everyday consequences of their
decisions. Put together by director Joe Douglas via a series of
interviews with those in Edinburgh affected one way or another by the
major city centre upheavals caused by the tram-works, what is
effectively an extended dramatised vox pop is performed by actors
Jonathan Holt and Nicola Roy, with musical accompaniment by composer
and singer David Paul Jones on piano.
In an initially comic but increasingly poignant series of exchanges
related by the actors via recordings of the interviews relayed through
mobile phone ear-pieces, we hear from the small business people whose
livelihoods were all but destroyed, the cabbies whose routes were
disrupted on a daily basis, and the bureaucrats putting the inevitable
positive spin on things. Most tellingly, there are those who wonder why
the old trams were scrapped in 1950s in the name of progress.
What's revealed is both a near operatic real life soap opera and a
piece of history which has touched a collective nerve still raw from
the experience. Bloody Trams has also tapped into the increasingly
vital question of how public officials can be held to account by the
constituents they are there to serve. With this in mind, if the
Traverse wants to really get its hands dirty with civic muck, the
similarly long-running shambles of the Caltongate development should be
tackled onstage post-haste.
The Herald, March 21st 2014
ends
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