MONKS. To 7 April.

Edinburgh

MONKS
by Des Dillon.

Royal Lyceum Theatre To 7 April 2007
Tue-Sat 7.45pm Mat Wed & Sat 2.30pm no mat 4 April
Runs 2hr 25min. One interval.

TICKETS: 0131 248 4848.
www.lyceum.org.uk
Review: Thelma Good 16 March 2007.

Flimsy and unclear resolution.
Des Dillon’s adaptation of his novel Six Black Candles was much enjoyed at the Royal Lyceum in 2005. His new play, also directed by Mark Thomson, draws on another of his novels, The Big Q. Dillon’s talent for the sharply comic observational line has not deserted him, but he uses a technique which works better on the page than on the stage. All too slowly we get each character’s back story. There isn’t enough developing on stage to keep the audience’s interest and attention as sharp as it should be, even though these brittle, emotionally taken-to-the-edge people are up an Italian mountain on Becky Minto’s fissured and stony set.

Scots’ masochistic relationships with faith and religion are highlighted as several lost people find themselves up high, hoping for a miracle or two from the hands of Robin Laing’s Fabian. He’s a monk who’s got a dispensation to atone by being a hermit and Laing makes sure we experience the monk’s fright at the challenges people bring. His Abbot, Matthew Zajac, detailed to keep an eye on the requests to be with Fabian, makes the most of his charge.

Scots Davy and Pat have liberated traumatised Jay from a mental ward while Suzanne, played by Frances Grey, has come of her own accord. Each one of them is troubled by Scottish ball-and-chain guilt, while daily charging up the peak is muscle bulging Italian Jo, Joe Montana, a man fighting his own anger. Peter Kelly’s quietly wise Pat is a great foil for the delightful Davy, played with a lovely careless zest by Stephen McCole Davy’s a Protestant but one with the gift of a laughter-inducing tongue.

The second act flows tighter than the first. But in the play’s final minutes the audience’s desire for a revelation receives a flimsy and unclear resolution. Watching it in Edinburgh, a city far more Protestant than the West of Scotland, with less raw sectarianism in its culture, it’s hard not to conclude this flawed play might feel more at home if staged in the more Catholic west of Scotland.

Fabian: Robin Laing.
Jo: Joe Montana.
Suzanne: Frances Grey.
Abbot: Matthew Zajac.
Pat: Peter Kelly.
Davy: Stephen McCole.
Jay: Paul Thomas Hickey.

Director: Mark Thomson.
Designer: Becky Minto.
Lighting: Jeanine Davies.
Sound: Tom Zwitserlood.

2007-03-31 10:57:46