Tron Theatre, Glasgow
Three stars
One kiss is all it takes for everyone to understand
each other in Catriona Lexy Campbell and Mairi Sine Campbell’s new play. Linguistically
that is, as ancient and modern are brought to rollickingly intimate life by the
Gaelic-based Theatre Gu Leor (Theatre Galore) company in the Tron’s Vic Bar en
route to an extensive cross-Scotland tour. The set-up is the sort of ghastly
tartan-draped corporate function whose perma-grinning hostess Lisa makes bogus
claims of preserving culture while blatantly intent on flogging it off to the
highest bidder. Think McWetherspoon by way of Trumpageddon.
With the audience ushered into a cabaret table
arrangement by Lisa’s step-daughter Eilidh and serenaded by Eddie’s
oh-so-couthy accordion playing, the dirt from Harris is unearthed along with a
bottle of David Beckham-branded whisky. This causes the corporate shindig to be
disrupted on an epic scale by seventeenth century poet Mairi Ruadh. Which is
when both the kissing and the drinking starts, as Mairi magics up the ability
for everyone to speak Gaelic while being simultaneously translated in surtitles
projected onto wide-screen TV monitors.
What follows in Lewis Hetherington’s production is a
series of up-close exchanges that move from oral story-telling to a form of
shared experience that trickles down the centuries. As MJ Deans’ Eilidh and
Calum Macdonald’s Eddie crave modernity beyond the kitsch championed by Mairi
Morrison’s Lisa, a dysfunctional culture estranged from itself on both a
personal and a political level is laid bare. In this sense, Muireann Kelly’s
fearlessly larger-than-life Mairi is both celestial agent provocateur and fairy
godmother to a tribe who in part lost its voice as it was colonised by big
business. If Ceilidh is anything to go by, it looks like it’s well on the way
to reclaiming it back.
The Herald, March 12th 2018
ends
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