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The Herald Scotland
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
A bitesize showcase of three wildly different plays
Tron Theatre, Glasgow Neil Cooper Four stars Take three plays, each around an hour in length, and all originally commissioned and performed at Glasgow's Oran Mor venue as part of the lunchtime phenomenon that is A Play, a Pie and a Pint. Then put them into the Tron's bijou Changing Room space with a trio of directors and a cast of three in a mini rep season of brand new productions and see what happens. The result in Studio3, an initiative introduced by the Tron's new artistic director Jemima Levick, is a bitesize showcase of wildly different work. Alright Sunshine is a monologue by Isla Cowan that sees police officer Nicky describes her life in a day patrolling Edinburgh's Meadows. As Nicky recounts her observations, her initially chatty portrait takes an increasingly dark turn as a seemingly minor incident over a Frisbee gives way to all too justifiable anger. Dani Heron is magnificent as Nicky in Debbie Hannan's tautly paced production. As she delivers Cowan's words, Heron exposes what women are up against in a world of institutional misogyny, domestic trauma and the very real dangers of life on the street. Read More: Calamity Jane at Festival Theatre, Edinburgh Jocasta review: ferocious production for a Play, a Pie and a Pint Glasgow Film Theatre to celebrate Gene Hackman with mini-season FLEG sees director Dominic Hill revisit Meghan Tyler's wild cartoonish comedy set in Protestant East Belfast on the day the Queen dies. Here, Caroline and Bobby hold court in their red, white and blue bedecked home and garden, one of three very different environments created by designer Kenny Miller. As council employee Tierna attempts to lower all flags to half-mast, Caroline and Bobby defend its honour with exaggerated zeal. Bobby in particular sees his lager soaked fantasies personified as a pole-dancing temptress in a Union Jack mini dress. Jo Freer as Caroline and Kevin Lennon as Bobby strut the stage like a pair of Viz comic grotesques come to life, while Heron doubles up as Tierna and the Fleg with similar abandon. Fruitcake is the new title of Frances Poet's play formerly known as The Prognostications of Mikey Noyce. It charts the awkward reunion between life long friends Holly and Mikey after Mikey calls Holly following several years' silence seeking the return of a Maroon 5 CD. Holly isn't happy, especially as Mikey never showed up for her mum's funeral. But then, Mikey hasn't left the house since before lockdown, since when he has developed all manner of conspiracy theories that he has to tell the world. Levick's own revival of Poet's play taps in to the long term side effects of lockdown and the pains of confinement in a battily manic display of sparring between Freer as Holly and Lennon as Mikey. This s only interrupted by Heron as Cassie, the motor-mouthed old school friend of Holly who might just be able to sort things out. While all three plays could easily stand alone, Studio3 is nevertheless a welcome compendium that sees serious subjects dealt with in a variety of ways that showcases the glorious range of playwriting that exists right now.
The Guardian
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Studio3 review – triple whammy of comedy is ferociously funny
If you were the gambling kind, you would have hedged your bets on A Play, a Pie and a Pint. What chance of survival would a lunchtime theatre have, especially one committed to staging 30 new plays a year, not to mention throwing in food and drink for the price of a ticket? But survive it has. On the go since 2004, the company has become a Glasgow West End institution. You can see why Jemima Levick, its former artistic director, thought it worth bringing some of its hits with her now she has taken over at the Tron. Studio3 is a three-play compendium, each seen individually or as an all-day marathon, given handsome new productions that star a quick-witted trio of actors: Jo Freer, Dani Heron and Kevin Lennon. There is nothing to link them beyond the chipboard surfaces of Kenny Miller's sets, which grow from cool austerity (Isla Cowan's Alright Sunshine) to red-white-and-blue vulgarity (Meghan Tyler's Fleg) to neurotic interior chaos (Frances Poet's Fruitcake). That, and the sense you can cover a surprising amount of ground in an hour. That is certainly the case in Alright Sunshine, which starts as an Edinburgh answer to Under Milk Wood and ends as a powerful critique of patriarchal oppression. Cowan's monologue is about Nicky, a police officer who keeps a discreet eye over the Meadows, the city-centre park where, as the day progresses, joggers give way to dog walkers, students, exercisers and drunks. In Debbie Hannan's crisp production, Heron navigates superbly from Cowan's amusing roll call of social types to a deeper line about male coercion, control and violence. Nicky is at once the obedient daughter, following her father's orders not to act like a girl; the motherly law-enforcer, keeping tempers in check with a kindly demeanour; and the potential victim, a lone woman walking in an area with a history of sexual assault. As playwright, Cowan packs a breezy comedy with polemical rage. Heron makes an abrupt switch in Fleg (the east Belfast pronunciation of flag) in which she appears as the sexualised projection of a loyalist's love of queen and country. Like a pole dancer togged up in Geri Halliwell's Brit awards dress, she has a dominatrix hold over Lennon's Bobby, whose patriotism is fuelled by self-destructive fury. Like a turbo-charged David Ireland play, Tyler's comedy has a cartoonish swagger, brought out by Dominic Hill's boisterous production. The boozy Bobby is a sort of Ulster unionist Homer Simpson, while his wife, the Marge-like Caroline, is played by Freer with equal abrasiveness. It is a ferocious and funny broadside against intolerance. Funny too is Poet's Fruitcake, previously known as The Prognostications of Mikey Noyce, in which Holly (Freer) discovers her old friend Mikey (Lennon) has not left the house since lockdown for fear of his Nostradamus-style predictions. His gnomic prophesies are wildly open to interpretation (or are they?), but play into our desire to control the future, avoid grief and escape regret. Levick's production has a claustrophobic pandemic energy, wrapping up an idiosyncratic trilogy with a punch. At the Tron theatre, Glasgow, until 16 May
