Òran Mór, Glasgow
Four stars
Life got cold for the three ice skating instructors in Lex Joyce’s play in the latest edition of A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s lunchtime theatre season. What did it for them was a fatal accident in the rink that left the brilliant white ice stained scarlet. The effect this has on Noa, Donal and Gus is to open old wounds that have been too close to the surface for too long. It may be easy enough to resurface the ice with the machine that gives the play its title and make like it never happened, but there are some things that just can’t be swept away so lightly.
Joyce’s play flits between workplace banter and internal monologue that tells it how it is as the trio prepare for Christmas. Initially we see them having fun putting personalities on the skaters shoes or else preparing their Secret Santas. As things take a darker turn after the accident, visits home, driving lessons or even just doing their job become loaded with everyday trauma.
Co-presented with Assembly Theatre, Anna Whealing’s production navigates these worlds with a quiet seriousness that gets to the heart of the matter in a way that sees each character remain tightly in control of their emotions. Private anxieties remain exactly that. Only when reunited do old tensions raised by the accident surface again in a play that looks at what remains unspoken.
Loretta Francis as Noa, Samuel Lee Johnston as Donal and Nathan Prestwich as Gus map this out in a tense and intense offering that cuts deep beneath the surface of a world where all involved may feel frozen out, but where there is more warmth than any of them might think.
The Herald, November 6th 2026
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