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The Swansong

Òran Mór, Glasgow

Four stars


Lydia gets more than she bargained for when she visits the local duck pond. Armed with a bottle of gin, a broken heart and a deep-set death wish, she intends chucking herself in the water and ending it all. A resident Swan has other ideas, however, and determines to show her a good time. Before long this oddest of couples are flying high on a bender in dodgy nightclubs and taking last trains to London, where Lydia wakes at dawn. 

 

Or at least this is the story Lydia tells at closing time in this lounge bar musical fantasia by writer/director Eve Nicol and composer/lyricist Finn Anderson. Based on a radio play by David Greig, this latest edition of A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s lunchtime theatre initiative is a bittersweet tale of everyday emotional survival. 

 

Julia Murray is in fine voice as broken diva Lydia, with Paul McArthur somehow transforming himself from barfly to Swan with just a change of shirt. This ushers in Anderson’s evocative set of stripped-back torch songs played by musical director Dale Parker on piano and saxophonist Rachel Duns on Heather Grace Currie’s after hours dive bar set. 

 

It may be something to do with the arrangements, but at points the songs sound not unlike companion pieces to some of the showbizzier tracks on the three original albums by long lost pre punk nouveau cabaret auteurs, Deaf School. 

 

Either way, Nicol and Anderson have taken Greig’s twenty first century take on fairytale princesses having a ball and turned its story of heartbreak and distress into a late night fable for our times. There is even a hint of a happy ending suggesting that, like the Swan, Lydia will soar again one day soon. 


The Herald, March 12th 2026

 

Ends 



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