Skip to main content

Miss Lockwood Isn’t Well

Òran Mór, Glasgow

Four stars

 

If we all have our crosses to bear, say a prayer for Alice Lockwood in James Reilly’s new play that makes up the latest incarnation of A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s lunchtime theatre season at Òran Mór. Alice is a primary school teacher in a Catholic school, or was before she was suspended for reasons yet to be made clear. In order to get to the bottom of the incident, Alice has been seconded for a session with ex GP turned secular therapist Dr. Freer. When Father Mackin shows up to hear Alice’s story, truth becomes stranger than fiction. 

 

Alice, you see, has been seeing saints. Fifteen of them have shown up in her classroom, proffering suitably saintly advice, with St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost things and souls, even helping her find a missing ear ring under the fridge. Trouble is, she is the only one who can see her new spirit guides, and the wonderland of ecclesiastical encounters is occupied her alone. Even worse, while the church isn’t exactly shy of putting its collective faith in invisible deities, in this case, Father Mackin and Dr. Freer have trouble believing her. 

 

Set on Heather Grace Currie’s dazzling crucifix lined set, Reilly’s play is a fascinating construction. As brought to life in Catriona MacLeod’s production, it begins with low-key naturalism before moving into increasingly absurd waters as the stakes of Alice’s inquisition are raised ever higher. 

 

Jane McCarry as Dr. Freer and Mark Cox’s Father Mackin are twin pillars of institutional orthodoxy as they quiz Alice, the centre of this possibly holy trinity played by Karen Young. As Alice herself says of her visions, if she had been around in fifteenth-century France she’d have been Joan of Arc. In today’s more cynical age, alas, she may only want to get back to work, but the sort of everyday miracles she appears to have encountered are seriously frowned upon. 

 

As the play takes a leap into Exorcist like territory, the final punchline may come from nowhere, but the end result is nevertheless a thought provoking and darkly comic look at faith, belief and what it takes for saints to preserve us.  


The Herald, March 26th 2026

 

ends

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
2 comments
Read more

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

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