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The Singer

Traverse Theatre

Four stars 

 

When Andy meets Joe while out busking, the creative bond between them is there from the start in Cora Bisset’s mini musical. Andy is a down on his luck singer/songwriter doing what he can to get by. Joe too has a love of music, but as a deaf person isn’t taken seriously by a music industry only interested in finding the next big thing. Out of this chance meeting, however, comes a brand new set of songs that may get Andy noticed, though where Joe fits into all this remains to be seen.

 

Based on a short film by Bissett and Jamie Rea, who plays Joe, this new venture is a collaboration between Dundee Rep and D/deaf theatre company, Solar Bear, in collaboration with Aberdeen Performing Arts. With KT Tunstall providing the songs, narration comes from Hannah Jarrett-Scott and Petre Dobre as a cartoon styled double act who also play a couple of music industry ghouls. They do this with a comic grotesquerie that gives things a fantastical air highlighted even more by the cartoon colours of Jenny Booth's set. This drives the show beyond the hangdog naturalism of Dylan Wood as Andy and and Rea's upbeat optimism as Joe.

 

Beyond the story’s central arc and some finely realised musical numbers in Michael John McCarthy’s arrangements, we also get to see Andy’s everyday domestic struggles as he attempts to make the big time. A protest at the attempted closure of the local deaf centre adds a greater political dimension to proceedings. When Andy does the dirty on Joe to take sole credit for their joint musical efforts, it is illustrative of the cut throat nature of their world. 

 

In the end, as Joe makes clear early on, music is something to feel, and here provides a lifeforce for survival in an equally life affirming construction that gives both our heroes a sense of hope in a big, ambitious production that puts D/deaf issues at its heart.

 

Until 30 Aug, various times.


The Herald, August 11, 2026

 

ends

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