Oran Mor, Glasgow
Four stars
Putting your foot in it
pays dividends in Alma Cullen’s new play, her latest for Oran Mor’s A Play, A
Pie and A Pint lunchtime initiative. Cullen’s merry dance of a plot sweeps
through a post-war era where rock and roll is about to take hold in a world
where dressed up glamour is de rigeur.
Things open, however, in
the unreconstructed world of the football boardroom. Here, Steven Duffy’s
wide-boy manager Kenny is working out his next move with Tom McGovern’s
seemingly buttoned-up butcher Murdo. Sponsorship deals may be on the table
along with plates of meat, but Kenny is working out the next move with his
latest squeeze inbetween wondering which team one of his star strikers is
really playing for. Murdo’s feet, meanwhile, are pure murder.
Salvation comes in the
form of Mimi, Kenny’s ice-cool fiancé and chiropodist extraordinaire. Not only
does she see through Murdo’s size-nine disguise, but she knows Kenny’s a heel,
and isn’t going to let him walk over her anymore.
A lovely sense of
serious fun pervades throughout Ken Alexander’s deliciously nuanced production,
which heightens Cullen’s deadly study of mid twentieth century social and
sexual mores in a world where a man’s world was starting to be kicked into
touch by those wanting to be on equal footing.
In this sense, shades of
Mad Men abound, with Duffy’s Kenny a fly chauvinist shyster doing things on the
hoof, oblivious to how the world is changing around him. McGovern’s portrait of
Murdo as a respectable local businessman is delivered with an urbane archness
that hints at something a lot more intriguing going on. It is Gail Watson’s
fabulously poised turn as Mimi that takes the lead here, however, with gallus
sass aplenty.
Things are lifted even
more by Chris Stuart Wilson’s choreography, which sees all parties punctuate
each scene-change with a wiggle and a shimmy. A show-stealing tango points the
way in style in a three-way dissection of what used to be called the battle of
the sexes that strides towards the future.
The Herald, March 12th 2020
ends
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