Skip to main content

McLuckie’s Line


Citizens Theatre, Glasgow
Three stars

Poor McLuckie. It looks like the compulsive gambler turned accidental jockey and even more accidental actor’s luck has all but run out in this new one-man monologue co-written by Martin Travers and Martin Docherty, and performed by Docherty for Broke Lad productions. Sitting in a funereally quiet hospital waiting room, McLuckie ponders his fate and how he got here as his past life flashes before his eyes in a series of bar-room yarns and routines worthy of anyone born to perform.

Growing up in working class Glasgow, McLuckie flits between the pub, the chip shop and the bookies with assorted n’er do well pals. Chance lands him not just betting on the gee-gees, but riding them as well, before falling at the first fence and finding himself at drama school.

This is where the fun really begins, as McLuckie finds himself playing Puck in a rave take on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream before being forced to endure the inevitable longeurs of unemployment. Docherty launches himself into all this with a gallus motor-mouthed charm, narrating his own rake’s progress with a sinewy intensity that never loses the show’s sense of fun.

Given the current debate regarding a lack of access into drama school for working class would-be actors, one might have expected some kind of frontline polemic against the apparent poshing-up of stage and screen. As it is, Travers and Docherty prefer to let McLuckie speak for himself, with all the everyday crises of an actor’s life intact. Docherty delivers the script with a relish that savours every one-liner, physicalising each punchline to stress the point. This makes for a loose-limbed fanfare for the common man that demystifies the business of show while suggesting matters of life and death are elsewhere. As for what happens next for McLuckie, all bets are off.

The Herald, April 27th 2018

ends

Comments

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) ...

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...

Big Gold Dreams – A Story of Scottish Independent Music 1977-1989

Disc 1 1. THE REZILLOS (My Baby Does) Good Sculptures (12/77)  2. THE EXILE Hooked On You (8/77) 3. DRIVE Jerkin’ (8/77) 4. VALVES Robot Love (9/77) 5. P.V.C. 2 Put You In The Picture (10/77) 6. JOHNNY & THE SELF ABUSERS Dead Vandals (11/77) 7. BEE BEE CEE You Gotta Know Girl (11/77) 8. SUBS Gimme Your Heart (2/78) 9. SKIDS Reasons (No Bad NB 1, 4/78) 10. FINGERPRINTZ Dancing With Myself (1/79)  11. THE ZIPS Take Me Down (4/79) 12. ANOTHER PRETTY FACE All The Boys Love Carrie (5/79)  13. VISITORS Electric Heat (5/79) 14. JOLT See Saw (6/79) 15. SIMPLE MINDS Chelsea Girl (6/79) 16. SHAKE Culture Shock (7/79) 17. HEADBOYS The Shape Of Things To Come (7/79) 18. FIRE EXIT Time Wall (8/79) 19. FREEZE Paranoia (9/79) 20. FAKES Sylvia Clarke (9/79) 21. TPI She’s Too Clever For Me (10/79) 22. FUN 4 Singing In The Showers (11/79) 23. FLOWERS Confessions (12/79) 24. TV21 Playing With Fire (4/80) 25. ALEX FERGUSSON Stay With Me Tonight (1980) ...