SAUCIEHALL STREET. To 3 April.

Tour

SAUCIEHALL STREET
by Iain Heggie

Vanishing Point theatre company Tour to 3 April 2004
Runs 2hr 30min One interval
Review Timothy Ramsden 14 March at Traverse Theatre 1 Edinburgh

The title thoroughfare may have gone down in the world. The script's terminal.Among today's Scottish playwrights there's one called David Greig and another named Gregory Burke. Iain Heggie's would-be comedy, set in a Glasgow actors' agency, mentions two fictional Scottish dramatists called Gregory Greig and David Burke.

These invented writers are not linked to any individual style to give them point or reality the swapped names alone seem supposed to be funny. As is conflating two real made-it-big Scots actors into Ewan Carlyle'.

Heggie hits some home truths - like young actors wanting to find fame not learn theatre-craft. But his comedy's a desperate, sad affair. Any views on theatre the play offers its blasts against everyone and everything - are coloured by the bilious negativity of the failed pair at its centre. Agent Dorothy Darvel, given a Brodie-ish sparkle in Jo Cameron Brown's crème de la crème-erie tones, and her husband Gerard, once reputed actor now on the scrapheap, are so embittered by lack of success nothing they say can be taken seriously.

Just as well, since the vitriol Gerard squirts at directors would exceed anything a mere critic might say of Matthew Lenton's unsubtly competent production. But he's hardly to blame, beyond accepting such a woeful script, which repeatedly covers the same points instead of developing satirical range, character or any kind of coherent plot.

Other actors cope loyally with unbelievable roles. Linda Duncan McLaughlin dithers ferociously as the least believable character - Dorothy's malapropistic, incompetent assistant whose keenness on the theatre trade is unmatched by the kind of knowledge a dim 15 year old might have picked up on the job. There's little Fraser C. Sivewright and Clare Yuille as young actors on Dorothy's books can do except bring manic fortitude to roles without any concept of coherence or development.

Sauciehall Street opened in the week a major article by David Greig looked at the future of Scotland' nascent National Theatre. This shows a vision and hopefulness lacking in Heggie's gracelessly negative blast and assumes Scottish theatre matters, while this piece reduces it to an insignificant mixture of naivety and bile.

Dorothy: Jo Cameron Brown
Gerard: Peter Kelly
Maureen: Linda Duncan McLaughlin
Barry: Fraser C. Sivewright
Candice: Clare Yuille

Director: Matthew Lenton
Designer/Lighting: Kai Fischer

2004-03-20 01:27:02