King’s Theatre, Edinburgh
Four
stars
With
the ongoing hoo-har regarding Scotland’s ever-changing plans to build a film
studio running on apace, those behind such a move might wish to check out Marie
Jones’ play, which dissects some of the unintended consequences of such a move
in tragi-comic fashion. Rather than work with a cast of thousands, Jones’ play
make a blockbuster using just two actors to convey how a small Irish community
is turned upside down by the arrival of a Hollywood film crew. Between them,
Owen Sharpe and Kevin Trainor play some fifteen characters to lay bare how
willing exploitation can turn sour before the pair walk off into the sunset as
heroes.
At the
play’s heart are Jake and Charlie, a pair of extras on what looks like a
historical romance, with all the windswept Irish clichés such an endeavour
entails. Both down on their luck, they bond over the location’s food truck
inbetween navigating their way around overbearing assistant directors, fawning
runners and an American leading lady desperate to get back to her roots. If
Jake and Charlie have stars in their eyes, the reality of just how fragile an
economically starved diaspora can be even as it is being colonised and
exploited is brought home by the presence of Jake’s teenage nephew, already on
the scrapheap and exiled from the glamourous scenes going on around him.
When Jones’
play was first seen in Edinburgh at the Traverse Theatre in 1996, the economic
boom of Ireland’s so-called Celtic Tiger was in full swing. Lindsay Posner’s
touring revival for the Theatre Royal, Bath and Rose Theatre Kingston doesn’t
attempt to update things, but instead makes a comic mockery of all the Irish clichés
that abound on the big screen. Through this, Jake and Charlie become a kind of
Beckettian double act for whom the closing credits haven’t quite rolled yet. Sharpe
and Trainor flit between characters in an instant in a contemporary classic
which leans towards a feel-good happy ending in the face of adversity.
The Herald, April 4th 2019
ends
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