LOVE FREAKS. To 1 June.
Glasgow
LOVE FREAKS
by Iain Heggie
Tron Theatre To 1 June 2002
Tue-Sat 8pm
audio described 29 May
Runs 2hr 35min One interval
TICKETS 0141 552 4267
Review Timothy Ramsden 18 May
One-liners are one-liners, but a farce is a play. The difference becomes increasingly apparent here.Buried under Iain Heggie's new farce is an 18th century love comedy, usually known in English as The Double Inconstancy. You don't need to know that. Perhaps it's better not to know it. While the Heggie-mobile's on a roll it needs no apology; as it becomes increasingly threadbare, knowledge of the original only emphasises how the action goes on, long after it's run out of fuel, just to hold its parallel course to Marivaux's play.
It's bang up to date, of course, set in a mock-up coffee-shop designed for training. Costly Coffee seems to have a worldwide network, though its chief cheese is an angina-ridden old loser who'd be lucky to keep an assistant managership in a small-town railway buffet. Shades of Feydeau, more than Marivaux, in his son and heir, afflicted with severe stammering unless he speaks with his idea of a big-talk American accent.
This is Ronan, who fancies coffee operative Celine. But she's keen on eco-warrior Jarvis. And Jarvis is a clever chap, for, as the plot turns swings into roundabouts, he's no sooner converted to globalisation and management than he finds himself a sharp executive suit to wear.
Motoring the action are odd-couple sisters, manipulative manager Whitney and her streetwalking sibling Britney. Britney could also be a shoplifter, given the array of store carrier-bags she manages to fill on a thirty-quid bribe from her sister. Whitney's very smart, seeming to possess the power to impose spontaneous slides into a powerpoint presentation, presumably by print-out telepathy.
Thankfully, the Tron fields an ace cast who play with energy and conviction. They're so likeable, and Heggie's liners often enough scabrously funny, they hold attention for act one, then divert it a bit longer from the ever-more apparent unlikelinesses the plot trots out.
Evelyn Barbour's killer look-alike set with its two levels, provides plenty of exit and entry points. But Graham Eatough's production, relying heavily on the one-shot technique of ever-increasing excitability, can't disguise the key sign of a failing farce: the way characters enter and leave the action not because their comings and goings are locked into the plot's inevitability, but because the writer needs them on or off stage. Farce is crazy necessity; this is too often mayhem without conviction.
Damon Sludden/Ronan O'Donnell: Brian Ferguson
Marlon O'Donnell/Ringo Sludden: Callum Cuthbertson
Whitney Colquhoun: Gabriel Quigley
Britney Colquhoun: Carmen Peraccini
Celine McAnespie: Julie Austin
Jarvis Hood: Paul Riley
Director: Graham Eatough
Designer: Evelyn Barbour
Lighting: Dave Shea
Sound: John Scott
2002-05-21 23:51:06