20-05-2025
Star of brassy new play 'knocks it out the park' as Keli heads for Dundee and Perth theatres
Both the play and the star bite off slightly more than they can chew, and that's part of the fun of Keli.
The National Theatre of Scotland's brand new touring play, which began in Edinburgh last week and will next be seen in Dundee and Perth.
Set in a fictional Scottish ex-mining town halfway along the M8, a lot of people from similar towns and villages in Fife and across the Central Belt will recognise the setting.
The place's glories are behind it, and teenage Keli's (Liberty Black) days are filled with working in the local supermarket and struggling to look after her mentally unwell mum (Karen Fishwick) alone.
Yet Keli lives for playing tenor horn in the local brass band, a remnant of the town's colliery days, and she's really good at it.
When a chance comes for the band to play the Royal Albert Hall in London, it's make or break – but with the pressure she's under, Keli seems likely to break.
Seeing what Martin Green, one-third of celebrated folk trio Lau, does with this self-penned play which stems from a fascination with the brass bands around his local area in Midlothian.
The results are a mixed bag, with the inclusion of a dragged-up rave sequence in the heart of London and a ghostly visitation by long-dead local brass band legend Willie Knox (Billy Mack) amid designer Alisa Kalyanova's stark coalmine set suggesting the play's trying to do too many things at once.
Yet there are real moments of beauty, especially in the way four players (including MD Louis Abbott, of indie group Admiral Fallow) provide a haunting soundtrack throughout, with director Bryony Shanahan cleverly placing tenor horn player Andrew McMillan alongside Keli when she 'plays'.
Incredibly, this is young actor Liberty Black's professional stage debut, and she knocks it out of the park, bristling with tension, dark humour and anxious energy.
Similarly, young Olivia Hemmati also steals her scenes as blunt, vaping shopworker Amy and posh London raver Saskia.
The finale, a hymn to the uplifting social power of music soundtracked by a real brass band (Whitburn or Kingdom, depending on when the play's seen), is also incredibly uplifting. It's almost worth the admission alone.
You're looking for a heartwarming, Brassed Off-style tale of working class grit and determination.
Keli is uplifting in its own way, but its darker, more dreamlike style and the sweary Scots dialogue give it an edge all of its own.
3/5
