Traverse
Theatre
Five
stars
The
stage is set up with drums and speakers and painted goth-black before Cora
Bissett comes on to share her very personal rites of passage. The scene resembles
every student union toilet circuit indie venue a generation ever moshed or
spilt beer on the floor of in such august institutions. Bissett knows such
venues well from a quarter of a century ago, when, as a teenager from
Glenrothes singing with barely formed local indie band Darlingheart, she was
catapulted into a world of tour buses, hotel rooms, photo-shoots, dodgy
managers and sleazy record company A&R men.
Now a
successful actress and theatre-maker, Bissett’s first actual scripted play is a
beautiful, heartfelt, funny and moving story of a time and a place, in which
she plays herself as she embarks on a wild crash-and-burn coming of age. Both
the band and all other characters in Orla O’Loughlin’s production are played by
Susan Bear, Simon Donaldson and a particularly hilarious Grant O’Rourke. Some names
may have been changed to protect the guilty in this co-production between the
Traverse and Raw Material in association with Regular Music, but this is a true
story to cherish.
For
all the fun of hearing live recreations of songs by long lost John Peel
favourites, Sultans of Ping FC, and wickedly funny impressions of future
stadium stars Radiohead and Blur, this is only partly about music. In a show
that’s really about daughters, dads and mums, some of its most moving moments
come from Bissett sharing private exchanges with her father, or else talking
about her own little girl. Out of this bursts a kick-ass riot of
self-constructed emancipation that joins the umbilical dots with every
independent woman who ever stood on a stage to create something as defiantly inspirational
as Bissett has in a life-changing litany of pure joy.
The Herald, August 8th 2018
ends
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