FESTIVAL THEATRE REVIEWS
ROCK Rabid account of US punk movement ●●●●●
Long before Kurt Cobain moved to Seattle, sold his ass and lost his soul, the clouds of the American punk rock movement were gathering. From the poetic beat riffs of Gregory Corso through to the narcotic and sexual anarchy of the assorted alumni of club CBGBs, legends were forged and legacies were ensured. Based on Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s ‘first oral history of the most nihilistic of all pop movements’ Please Kill Me, French actor Pierre Baux and cellist Vincent Courtois tear into these hazy tales of excess with a heightened passion. Switching between English and French (much of which is subtitled) Baux’s monologue is a mixture of confession and rumination, altering perspectives and wigged out hallucinatory ramblings. Iggy Pop, Jim Morrison, Todd Rundgren, Patti Smith and the New York Dolls are evoked amid the frenzied delu- sion. Courtois soundtracks it all with skill and power while Baux pulls homage from the rubble of 1970s Manhattan. L’Atelier du Plateau’s production is intense, metrical and deeply affecting. (Paul Dale) ■ Institute français d’Ecosse, 225 5366, until 18 Aug (not 11, 12 & 13), 10pm, £10 (£8).
I, TOMMY Sex, socialism and sub-standard comedy ●●●●●
First, a confession. Like Tommy Sheridan, I, too, have frequented . . . socialist meetings. However, contrary to media myth, left-wingers in Scotland don’t divide neatly into Tommy’s cheerleaders and those who stick pins in his effigy before they go to bed. I, for one, am of neither persuasion. Which, in short, means I arrived at Ian Pattison’s eagerly-anticipated new comedy, I,Tommy, more
than prepared to have a laugh, not only at Sheridan, but at a sorry episode which split a left which already had a tendency to be about as united as a sack of bad-tempered rodents.
Laugh I did, but not often. Pattison’s play is not so much the Scottish left’s The Thick Of It as Carry
On Sheridan. ‘I am not a politician who will kiss your baby’, says Sheridan in the play, ‘I am a politi- cian who will give you a baby.’ One would expect better from the creator of Rab C Nesbitt. Making sex jokes at the expense of
Sheridan is the comic equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel. Yet Pattison rarely rises above the double-entendres long enough to surpass the comic moment when, following Sheridan’s dismissal of his legal team during the original libel trial, the hated Scottish Sun carried the undeniably funny headline, ‘Tommy drops his briefs’. Des McLean plays Sheridan with a humorously overblown rhetorical style, whilst Colin McCredie performs the role of Alan McCombes (the former friend, now demoniser-in-chief, of the fallen politi- cian) with an earnestness that illuminates Pattison’s sympathies.
Sheridan used to say that socialists should be interested in ‘what’s happening in the boardrooms, not what’s happening in the bedrooms.’ If only he’d stuck to that line when his own private life was in the spotlight. He could have spared himself a year in prison, and spared theatre audiences this low grade comedy. (Mark Brown) ■ Gilded Balloon Teviot, 622 6552, until 27 Aug (not 13), 3.15pm, £14–£16 (£12–£14).
PETER PANIC Dystopian Peter Pan fails to inspire an emotional response ●●●●●
Showing an altogether darker, dystopian view of JM Barrie’s titular character of Peter Pan, Function Theatre brings together a brutal tale of morality, mob rule and the power of the State, stripping Barrie’s oeuvre of its innocence in the process.
The scene is savage. The UK’s in crisis, there are rioters on the street and someone has murdered a pregnant woman, and stolen the baby from her womb. Behind closed doors, Prime Minister Steven, Wendy his wife and their recently adopted son Peter are fighting their own battle of sexual confusion, loneliness and despair.
The acting here is largely excellent and Peter Baldwin’s script certainly has plenty to say about the bigger moral and sociological issues at play in our ever-depressing Big Society. Yet, somehow the characters, even at the play’s darkest moments, fail to inspire the empathy and emotion required for the show’s big reveal to have any impact, leaving the whole experience feeling strangely hollow. (Anna Millar) ■ Pleasance Dome, 556 6550, until 26 Aug (not 13), 2.50pm, £8–£10 (£7–£9).
HALF A PERSON: MY LIFE AS TOLD BY THE SMITHS William, it was really nothing ●●●●●
A twentysomething Smiths fan living in London tells of his brief encounter with a girl from Manchester and his friendship with a terminally ill gay man. Pivotal moments from the life of the young lad, who is of course called William, are underscored with Morrissey’s lyrics, sung live and backed by snippets of the original recordings. It’s not a bad idea for a show, but the life of this
self-obsessed youngster isn’t terribly interesting, especially when it’s sandwiched between slices of Mozza’s resonant melancholy poetry. The real problem is the writing: it’s full of clichés and lacks the kind of particularity that can make ordinary lives interesting, something Morrissey has gloried in. Also, it doesn’t ring true, from the characters and relation- ships down to little details about being a Smiths fan (if you were, you’d be aware Morrissey had a solo career, for example). There’s nothing really wrong with the performance, but there’s no getting round the fact that the writing’s rubbish. (Miles Fielder) ■ Zoo Southside, 662 6892, until 27 Aug (not 15), 7.50pm, £8 (£6).
84 THE LIST 9–16 Aug 2012