Hatches, Matches & Dispatches, Saughtonhall Church

Published on Thursday 13 August 2009 09:45

Hatches, Matches & Dispatches **** Saughtonhall Church

THE "House Full" signs are up outside Saughtonhall Church, where the Saughtonhall Drama Group are making a more than decent fist of Alan Cochrane's award-winning farce, set on the boundary between Leith and Edinburgh in 1924.

Crucially, this was the year after the two became one by parliamentary decree. Like their home towns, the McIvor family from Leith and the Burns family from Edinburgh are about to be brought together by the marriage of their children, Carol McIvor and Robin Burns.

This does take a wee while to get going, with Scott McGillivray as Robin and Estelle Bryson as Carol making hard work of the opening scene as they establish that they are preparing the McIvor house for the wake for Carol's favourite Auntie, Nellie.

They hold fast to their task, however, and when Ishbel Shand appears as the ghost of Nellie things begin to warm up. With the arrival of the two families relating the catastrophic way the funeral went, the setup is complete for some seriously funny action.

The mothers, Eleanor McLennan as proud Jean McIvor and Betty Meston as hoity-toity Meg Burns, go at it hammer and tongs. The dads, Gus Maitland as Bob McIvor and Colin Mitchell as Hugh Burns, are equal to the task of indicating the subtle balance between maintaining domestic harmony and their own friendship.

Add Gladys Bell as Meg Burns' old mum, Mrs Bell, and Murray Petrie as ne'er-do-well lodger Willie Lomax and the humour piles up.

One of the joys of Cochrane's script is his use of local vernacular and setting. The company ensure both are given prominence, relishing the old Scots words while allowing their audience time to work out the geography – and remember long demolished buildings.

Indeed, it is this uncommon awareness of the audience which allows the whole production to breath and makes it so much better than the sum of its parts. There are plenty of times when the acting could be better but, by allowing the comedy to breath without forcing it, the company have their audience in stitches.

Run ends Saturday