Òran Mór, Glasgow
Three stars
Showbiz, as any would-be bill-topper will tell you at length given half the chance, is a fickle mistress. One minute you’re front page news and the world and it’s mistress want a prime piece of you, the next you’re last year’s thing, over the hill and box office poison. But what about those who never hit the big time beyond the ever decreasing circuit they’re trudging around belting out the same old numbers that were once hits for other people?
Come on down Sian Silver, the still game diva put in the spotlight in composer Brian James O’Sullivan and writer Hannah Jarrett-Scott’s mini musical for A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s latest lunchtime theatre season. Sian has been treading the boards since forever in her mirror ball styled outfit, but with audiences down and other attractions all the rage she might just have sung her last number.
This doesn’t stop the creepy super fans hovering round her dressing room in the hope of Sian’s well-worn sparkle rubbing off on them. Then there is the flatulent lighting guy who manages to leave her in the dark, the spivvy theatre manager who only wants bums on seats, and the blast from the past that is her old boyfriend turned big time producer. Most of all, however, Sian is haunted by her younger self, a young firebrand so full of confidence and ambition that you wonder where it all went wrong.
O’Sullivan and Jarrett-Scott’s boutique backstage drama puts an assortment of ginger wigs to good use in Lesley Hart’s production, in which Sian finally gets to play Annie, however past her prime she may be. With Liz Ewing as older Sian and Julia Murray as everybody else, Sian’s lifetime of regrets sees Ewing play her as a kind of anti Piaf in waiting by way of All About Eve’s similarly monstrous Margo Channing.
Such inspirations may be obvious, but need more focus beyond Murray’s series of quick changes that lend a comic edge to proceedings. Rather than be thrown on the scrap heap by younger models, Sian’s bumpy night sees her find herself again in a feelgood ending in which her life, at least, really is a cabaret.
The Herald, October 9th 2025
ends
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