Assembly
Roxy
Four
stars
It’s
all happening down at the Kirktoon Amateur Dramatics Society. The company need
a new show, and Louise McCarthy’s wannabe director Amy thinks she has just the
thing if Gail Watson’s queen bee Sheena will give her the chance. With
inclusivity policies meaning extra brownie points in the district am-dram
competition, they hit on the idea of staging My Left Foot, the Oscar-winning
film about Christy Brown, the working class Irish kid born with cerebral palsy,
but who went on to become a writer and artist. As with the film, which saw
Daniel Day-Lewis ‘crip up’ as Brown, KADS cast John McLarnon’s ex west end luv
Grant in the lead. Dawn Sievewright’s love-struck Gillian, however, has other
plans, particularly where Matthew Duckett’s Chris is concerned.
Softley
Gale’s show is designed to mark inclusive company Birds of Paradise’s
twenty-fifth anniversary, and is co-produced here with the National Theatre of
Scotland. What follows is a potty-mouthed exercise in liberal-baiting bad taste
that could easily be a Ryan Murphy TV show transplanted to a small Scottish
town. As with Glee, what begins as parody uses irreverence as a weapon to make
some serious points.
Apart from anything else, the singing by the
cast of eight is an overwrought wonder, with Scott Gilmour and Claire McKenzie’s
compositions similarly too good to be pastiche. A couple of numbers by Jerry
Springer The Opera’s Richard Thomas push things even further. Some of the show’s
cleverest moments come from integrating Natalie MacDonald’s Nat as a signer for
the hearing impaired, with musical director Gavin Whitworth giving visual
descriptions.
All
of this makes for a scurrilous but schmaltzy affair that kicks received notions
of disability well into touch. In keeping with the tone of the piece, this makes
for something utterly fan spastic.
The Herald, August 9th 2018
ends
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