Skip to main content

San Diego

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow
Four stars

Things have probably changed in the American limbo-land that inspired David Greig’s sprawling search for truth since it was first staged by the Tron Theatre at the Edinburgh International Festival sixteen years ago. However San Diego’s physical landscape worked out, one suspects the collective existential crisis portrayed by the play’s cabin-load of lost souls looking for somewhere safe to land hasn’t got much better.

No matter, because there is hope in Mark Thomson’s revival, performed here by final year BA Acting students, who themselves are about to spread their wings and move into scarier climes. For one thing, at least Greig is still with us, despite writing himself into his own play as a geeky tourist and then bumping himself off in a moment that sees the criss-crossing narrative strands fleetingly converge.

Moving at the pace of a Wim Wenders travelogue and just as fascinated with America, the play’s set of estranged secular rituals sees everyone onstage struggle to believe in both themselves and something beyond. Thomson’s cast of eleven grab hold of the play’s complex set of ideas with an intelligent relish as they move through the open doors of designer Gilly Slater’s strip-lit constructions.

Among a roll-call of fine performances, Bailey Newsome’s David Greig is a Harry Potterish swot, Caleb Hughes a Pilot with no direction and Felixe Forde a quietly determined Daniel, the Nigerian runaway in search of his errant mother who may or may not have sung backing vocals on Band of the Run by Wings. Most moving of all is the relationship between Sorcha Kennedy’s Laura and Rowan Smith’s David, so by the end you’re willing them to survive.

In a global village where conformity is signalled by an endless line of women named Amy, and everyday tragedies are worth much more than disaster movies, Greig’s play shows how travel can alienate as much as broaden the mind. The result is a painful but ultimately optimistic flesh and blood dreamscape of the lengths we’ll sometimes go to in order to remind ourselves we’re alive.

The Herald, May 30th 2019

Ends


Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

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) ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Myra Mcfadyen - An Obituary

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Passage – Hip Rebel Degenerates: Black, White and Red All Over

Prelude – The Power of Three   Fear. Power. Love. This life-and-death (un)holy trinity was the driving force and raisons d’être of The Passage, the still largely unsung Manchester band sired in what we now call the post-punk era, and who between 1978 and 1983 released four albums and a handful of singles.    Led primarily by composer Dick Witts, The Passage bridged the divide between contemporary classical composition and electronic pop as much as between the personal and the political. In the oppositional hotbed of Margaret Thatcher’s first landslide, The Passage fused agit-prop and angst, and released a song called Troops Out as a single. The song offered unequivocal support for withdrawing British troops from Northern Ireland.    They wrote Anderton’s Hall, about Greater Manchester’s born again right wing police chief, James Anderton, and, on Dark Times, rubbed Brechtian polemic up against dancefloor hedonism. On XOYO, their most commercial and potentially mo...
Post a Comment
Read more