SHINING SOULS. To 1 March.

Scotland

SHINING SOULS
by Chris Hannan

Tron Theatre To 1 March 2003
Tue-Sat 8pm
Audio-described 27 February
Aftershow discussion: 20 February
Runs 2hr 50min One interval

TICKETS 0141 552 4267
Review Timothy Ramsden 14 February

If you want complexity in drama, here's your thing. If you go for dazzling wit and ideas bubbling, colliding, reshaping, rather than settled in a dish for spoon-feeding, this is for you.Chris Hannan's reworked his play since its 1996 Traverse premiere. It's magic-realism rampant through East End Glasgow - a mere sprint from the Tron, which co-produces with director Alison Peebles' V.amp productions.

The mix of everyday working play - bloke on the cadge, woman choosing between two men - and spiritual elements gives an unusual ambition and satisfyingly rich texture to the human comedy of the plot-lines.

If anyone's at its centre, it's Ann, unlikely Clydeside siren, and in Kathryn Howden's conscience-ridden performance less the obviously glamorous type than someone with a brazen warmth that draws in male attention: more a madonna of the tenements than their Marilyn.

With one of several absurdist tinges Hannan calls both her lovers Billy. It doesn't seem arbitrary: but a dramatic compression of how different people can play the same potential role in someone's life. It comes to seem inevitable that Rod Matthews' nearly-bridegroom, in his earnest concern, is bound to lose out to Matt Costello's less spruce lover, a man whose personality's rough edges signal need as much as his rival's immaculate neatness does giving, so making him more the person Ann is seeking.

There's a patchwork feel to the story, as character groups cross each others' paths, merging their stories. It's something caught in Jacqui Gunn's towering design, its paths to various doorways seeming to interweave, sending people into each others' lives.

Unlikely coincidences occur: a rare record turns up in a car-boot sale, chancer Charlie's lie to extract sympathy money from his wife - saying his mother's dying - turns out a second later to be true. But it's never dramatic exigency: it's the play's central point - the mix of the numinous and the material in people's lives.

And more; for these everyday people are the play's shining souls. It's more Dostoyevsky than soap opera, thank goodness. In this world a wardrobe borne by Ann's two suitors turns out not just a back-breaking love-test, nor even the symbol of the past living on despite a break towards a new life - the wardrobe is a place of death, where Ann found her two boys hanging years ago.

New life and the chance of death merge: even more when Billy 2 comes close to hanging himself in the new wardrobe, rescued by supposed chance into the benediction of a new relationship.

A whole concept of life as a spiritual, yet material-conditioned, journey, of personal growth never easily achieved, is worked out through such images. And it would be easy to follow this pattern through other characters - Ann's daughter Mandy for one.

This might sound heavy-handed. But Hannan's dialogue is sparky, witty and follows characters' trains of thought with pacy realism. Though there came a patch late in act two where I wondered if I was really learning more about these characters, for the most part the play justifies Peebles' enthusiastic revival. In turn, she and a fine cast - including Dave Anderson's humorously brusque cleric (the bored professional's approach, and the flaring intensity of Billy McColl's self-styled amateur Prophet mark out the territory of ordinary flawed mortals' spiritual journeys with fine irony) - make this a major revival.

Will anything in Scottish theatre this year outstrip this production - Edinburgh Festival or not? A rarely expressive mix of life's energy and depths.

Stuart: Dave Anderson
Charlie: Paul Blair
Billy 2: Matt Costello
Ann: Kathryn Howden
Mandy: Isabelle Joss
Prophet John: Billy McColl
Max: Davy McKay
Nanette: Una McLean
Billy 1: Rod Matthews
Margaret Mary: Julie Wilson Nimmo

Director: Alison Peebles
Designer: Jacqui Gunn
Lighting: Paul Sorley
Sound: Paddy Cuneen

2003-02-17 20:34:54