51 PEGASUS. Tour to 5 October.
Tour.
51 PEGASUS
by Ian McDonough.
Grey Coast Theatre Company Tour to 5 October 2002.
Information 01847 89 840.
www.greycoast.org.uk
Runs 1hr 50min No interval.
TICKETS 018476 891 426 (or as on tour listing).
Review Timothy Ramsden 21 September at The Arches, Glasgow.
A fascinating subject is not fully invested with dramatic action or character development.
John James, back home in the North East coast of Scotland from university, is off to New Mexico as an astronomer. Keen to escape with him is would-be witch Morag, whose dubious fortune-telling suggests astrology would be more her starry line.
Whatever, out there among the points of light illumining the dark, is Pegasus 51, first example of a star (besides our own sun) circled by planets, so an indication there may be multiple life-forms in the universe.
This gives McDonough's play its energy. If it's fitful that's because his use of theme and character isn't matched here by characters' development through action.
Instead, they tend to be caught in conversational orbits held by thematic gravity from whirling into new spheres. And there's an awful lot of exposition and reminiscence.
The play's set on a pier outside the local hall, where a Saturday night dance is going on. Those caught in the close community are desperate to escape, or, like Trouble, come to frustrated terms with the fact they're stuck in nine months of rain and a forshortened prospect. The future, like the coast, is grey.
McDonough fruitfully mixes a sense of strangeness with the claustrophobia of a close-knit tangle. Space and fortune are out there and characters repeatedly talk of feeling alien. It turns out to be true, as John James learns the secrets of his begetting, and is tested by the unthinking loyalty of friendship for which he lacks the toughness and the clannishness. It all distances him from people he knew as children and now has to see in new lights.
Less successful is the late attempt to suggest John James' lingering desires are less for Morag than Billy, and the sudden pushing of Billy into the protagonist's place. And the writer still has something to learn on the tricky technique of managing entries. Martin Docherty brings a menacing energy each time he returns but it's hard to disguise that his several reappearances seem arbitrary, a matter of the dramatist's convenience. In one, at least, when he brings his homophobic response to John James' tentative approaches towards Billy, he seems to have been eavesdropping.
A clutch of decent performances might have been taken further by more invigorating direction. It's easy to say more dramaturgical work on the script could have helped too.
But there are times when you either begin over again or go ahead, taking on any shortcomings for the sake of a script's strengths. This was a sensible course here. McDonough's dialogue and setting, to an extent his characters, certainly his subject, are worth attention.
John James: Dan Oliveira.
Billy McPhee: P.J. Farrell.
Trouble: Martin Docherty.
Morag McPhee: Jodie Campbell.
Bella McPhee: Helena Ross.
Director: Tom Magill.
Designer: Moley Campbell.
Lighting: John Cairns.
Music: Andy Thorburn.
2002-09-22 19:51:38