Òran Mór, Glasgow
Four stars
When seventy-something Diane decides it’s time to die, the only way to go, it seems, is to take a last trip to Switzerland, where assisted dying is legal. The ticket price from Easterhouse isn’t cheap, alas, and Diane’s pension won’t stretch much further than paying for the not entirely legal painkillers supplied by her postman Connor. Diane’s wild days may be over, but she’s still queen of the Scheme. Diane’s carer Julie, meanwhile, finally dumps her philandering husband, an act of mid-life emancipation that points her towards a novel way of fundraising for Diane that is soon keeping them all in clover.
Such is life in Éimi Quinn’s increasingly wild new play, which opens the twentieth anniversary season of A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s lunchtime theatre phenomenon - the first under new artistic director Brian Logan - with a bang and a lot more besides. As Julie sets up shop as an online dominatrix, she brings new life as well as a steady income stream into her living room that liberates all three of those behind it.
This is delivered with deadpan abandon in Jennifer Dick’s darkly hilarious little production, starring Janette Foggo as the indefatigable Diane, Kyle Gardiner as Connor and Helen McAlpine as Julie in a script that tackles its of-the-moment subject in tragi-comic fashion. The play also deals with the rarely whispered topic of female sexuality once a woman reaches a certain age. Again, this is dealt with in a way that recognises the everyday absurdity of the situation while never losing sight of its seriousness.
All this is brought home by an acutely observed series of spoof radio ads that punctuate each scene. Neither Julie or Connor can predict Diane’s happy ending, alas, in a taboo busting riot of a show akin to a Viz comic strip come to life in all its potty-mouthed glory. With dates coming up in Edinburgh, Paisley, Johnstone and Aberdeen following this week’s Glasgow run, matters of life and death don’t come much funnier.
The Herald, February 27th 2025
ends
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