Traverse Theatre,
Edinburgh
Three stars
In many ways it is the meticulously observed behavioural tics and nuances of personality that count here, something relished by Daniel Campbell and James Garvock as they invest Frank and Malky with a depth beyond the play's initial hysteria that makes for a darkly funny portrait of life on the edge.
Three stars
When you've got nothing, you've got
nothing to lose, as some street-smart sage once wrote. So it goes for
Malky, the Leith Walk wag at the heart of Mikey Burnett's
play as he lets rip over one tragi-comic night sparring with his
flat-mate Frank in the bathroom. When Malky bursts in, he's lost his
last pound on a sure fire winner that fell at the first, the dole
have stopped his money, and, most crucially, the love of his life has
dumped him to the point of almost having to get a restraining order
out on him.
What follows over the next fifty
minutes is a quickfire riot of the sort of twisted desperado logic
which initially comes on like a post Trainspotting flat-sharing
sit-com. Things take a more serious turn in Iain Davie's production
for the Napier University sired Trig Point Theatre
company, as such exchanges point up just how much those backed into a
corner by economic and emotional poverty can end up clutching at any
straw that's going. The fact that the first voice you hear on this
final night of Hothouse, the Traverse's week-long mini season of
local grassroots theatre companies, is
neither Malky or Frank's, but that of David Cameron, speaks volumes
about where Burnett is coming from without ever having to lay it on
with a trowel.
In many ways it is the meticulously observed behavioural tics and nuances of personality that count here, something relished by Daniel Campbell and James Garvock as they invest Frank and Malky with a depth beyond the play's initial hysteria that makes for a darkly funny portrait of life on the edge.
The Herald, November 17th 2015
ends
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