Writer: Douglas Maxwell
Director: Gareth Nicholls
Set and Costume Designer: Kenny Miller
If you’re looking for a show about adult relationships that’s hugely entertaining, this is the one for you. It opens with one of the funniest sex scenes you’ll ever see. Free of the kids for the evening, married couple Liane (Lucianne McEvoy) and Davie (Andy Clark) have a quickie before getting ready to go round to their friend Milo’s place (Nicholas Karimi). He, it turns out, has taken up with a much younger woman, only a short while after losing his wife to Covid; the action is set in 2021.
That Helen was also a much-loved friend of Liane and Davie adds spice to their responses. Greta (Yana Harris) seems perfectly nice, but her romance with the grieving Milo is surely doomed, right?
Douglas Maxwell has a great deal of fun anticipating and testing all of our knee-jerk reactions to the situation he’s so wilfully set up. His writing is sharp, thoughtful and contemporary. He renders the witty dialogue with a broad brush, often getting Liane to voice what many of us are thinking, and dropping plot bombshells. This gives individual lines a great deal of impact, both comedically and dramatically. For example, we learn the discomforting fact that Greta attended the school where Liane teaches. He gets this across very economically, by having the younger woman address the older one formally.
When Liane goes too far in her protection of Helen’s memory and her rejection of Greta, the audience groans as one. We warm to Liane and her over-the-top observations, but we don’t want her to behave so badly she lets herself down.
Likewise, in a piece that plays with expectations and stereotypes, Davie is shown as a typical middle-aged man, a dad who looks through his friend’s collection of old records rather than talk about what his wife calls “life stuff”. Yet when the conversation strays to the subject of his work, he turns out to be a quirky creative, rather than what the cliché might have demanded: a reliable, unimaginative drone.
In this colourful and engrossing co-production between the Traverse Theatre, Raw Material and Citizens Theatre, the stage space is used well and effectively, allowing for private pairings and conversations. The casting is tip-top and all four performances are outstanding. Timing is crucial in this play and no-one could have given it a better world première. Book while you can.
Runs until 25 August 2024 | Image: Contributed
