IF DESTROYED TRUE. To 22 May.

London

IF DESTROYED TRUE
by Douglas Maxwell

Menier Chocolate Factory 53 Southwark Street SE1 To 22 May 2005
Tue-Sat 8pm Mat Sat & Sun 3.30pm
Runs 2hr 25min One interval

TICKETS: 020 7907 7060 (+£1.75 transaction fee)
www.menierchocolatefactory.com (no fee)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 27 April

Explosive if complex view of people in the kind of town governments built then forgot.No idea's so good it can't be perverted at local level. So with New Flood, angling in on Glasgow's claim to be the worst place in Scotland. This fictional town grabs private-sponsored money, meant for renewal, and improbably sidelines it to a scheme intended to win the same annual prize in future years by making things worse underneath surface improvements.

The means is an internet site established through a mix of plausible committees and public pronouncements, with gun-barrel skulduggery behind the scenes. This forms Douglas Maxwell's satire, improbable yet blazing with conviction, finale of the 4-play Paines Plough This Other England' season.

Or, This Other Scotland, and unless Scotland's very different from England hymning the artist as soul of the community must be ironic. Narrator Vincent (Paul Thomas Hickey, combining shrewd wit with insolent scepticism) has an interest in this gospel, having claimed artistic status throughout, though others call his decorative additions to the town vandalism.

Both the script, free-flowing in time and place, and John Tiffany's production, are in the swim of current Scottish theatre style. An open space, predominantly grey, is inhabited by six no-back benches, the sort that make walking preferable to sitting. They rearrange into the public sculpture important to the action and into New Flood's not-too-high-rise, from which Vincent's mother plunges in heroin despair, clutching the guitar with which she'd started out a starry-eyed Dylan fan. Behind, a huge computer screen types out significant lines.

Dundee seems a magnet for Scotland's finest actors, but several of this cast have developed while in the Rep's Ensemble. Like Robert Paterson, an oily pharmacist and frontman of local worthies Common Good. Speaking plausible at his desk, he's all concerned smiles, but hidden at his heels is hitman Norman (a lean, mean Alan Tripney, who's lurked in the shadows throughout act one). And Keith Fleming, whose Michael moves into moral conviction, while Dundee staple Ann Louise Ross shows the anxiety hidden under a reserved public persona.

It needs piecing together as it proceeds, but Maxwell and Tiffany present forceful satirical images with cool conviction and moral gusto.

Vincent: Paul Thomas Hickey
Grace: Cora Bissett
Arlene/Mrs Young: Ann Louise Ross
Tupelo Tam/Sweeny: Robert Paterson
Michael: Keith Fleming
Ty: David Ireland
Norman: Alan Tripney

Director: John Tiffany
Designer: Neil Warmington
Lighting: Natasha Chiver
Composer: Brian Docherty
Movement: Struan Leslie

2005-05-03 04:45:04