Òran Mór, Glasgow
Three stars
Margaret has lost her way. No, not in the geographical sense. The Glasgow gay bar this American émigré of a certain age has just landed in on a rainy Friday night is a place she specifically sought out. For what, though? Comfort? A friendly face? A cheeky cocktail as she bonds with strangers? Sure, Margaret gets all of these and more eventually in Bethany Tennick’s lunchtime mini musical for A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s latest season, but the welcome she initially gets from bar manager Dove isn’t exactly warm.
Even so, Margaret’s lack of direction comes from somewhere else. As a workaholic whose grown up offspring have decamped all the way to Australia, she has an empty spot where some kind of love used to live. Dove, meanwhile, has issues of her own to deal with, some of which may or may not be solved by the contents of the mysterious package her sidekick Si has been despatched to collect. When Si attempts to cast a spell to purge all the trio’s personal demons, alas, once the power of Kylie Minogue is invoked, it’s not only their collected personal baggage that almost goes up in smoke.
By setting out its store in a place where everybody knows your name, Tennick’s play recognises the need for company and community in the sort of everyday warmth where Margaret, Dove and Si can give voice to their anxieties on sex, sexuality, love and loss. Shona White, Rosie Graham and Jake Stephen bring the trio to respective life in Steve Lauder-Russell’s production on the cut-price glitz of Gillian Argo’s bar room set with aback and forth of self help inspired dialogue.
This is peppered with a series of show-bar friendly numbers that offer the sort of after hours salvation you only see at closing time in this co-production with Aberdeen Performing Arts and Renfrewshire’s OneRen organisation. As enlightenment beckons in a song, Margaret, Dove and Si look set to find their way home in a warm hearted musical dramady that makes for ideal after hours entertainment.
The Herald, April 2nd 2026
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