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VL – Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024, Roundabout@Summerhall

Reviewer: Tom Ralphs

Writers: Kieran Hurley and Gary McNair

Director: Orla O’Loughlin

Max and Stevie are back. Six years on from the 2018 Fringe hit Square Go, Kieran Hurley and Gary McNair give us the next instalment in the lives of the two Hammerton High School students. The two boys may be a few years older, but they are no more mature and the risk of being uncool is still the biggest danger they face and the hardest thing to overcome.

This time round the action revolves around the upcoming end of year school disco where Max must try and shed his tag as a VL. VL stands for virgin lips, the unwanted title awarded to anyone who is yet to kiss someone on the lips. That Stevie doesn’t also have to complete this challenge is down to a mere technicality, but the upper hand he has gives him full bragging rights over his mate.

From this basic idea, Hurley and McNair have created what for Max and Stevie is a high stakes drama with everything to lose, and for the audience is a hilarious reminder of their own schooldays. Populated with recognisable characters such as Wee Cosa, the schoolboy rapper, Binbags, the goth, and Joe the Bigot, whose name requires no further explanation, and using schoolboy terms for anything even remotely related to parts of the human anatomy and sexual activity, it’s an almost endless celebration of school life, which waits till the final minutes to deliver an underlying message about the unfair pressure kids can put each other under and the personal inadequacies that can lie behind the mask of a bully.

As Max, Scott Fletcher is a bundle of nervous anxiety trying to be cool while knowing that he isn’t. As Stevie, Gavin Jon Wright believes his one kiss to date makes him a man of the world while all the evidence points to a different conclusion. Wright also gets to play other characters including a scene-stealing Wee Cosa, delivering wonderfully puerile raps with the glee of a boy who thinks he’s the next Eminem.

It’s clever, well observed and continually laugh out loud funny. The sound of two writers enjoying themselves being silly and laughing at their younger selves, and two actors sharing the delight in their performances under the direction of Orla O’Loughlin who knows just how to bring the trials and tribulations of adolescence to vivid comedic life.

Runs until 26 August 2024 (not 20th) | Image: Contributed

A glorious return

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