Review: The Corstorphine Road Nativity, Festival Theatre

Published on Monday 7 December 2009 08:43

The Corstorphine Road Nativity ***, Festival Theatre

THERE are plenty of laughs, a sweet twist and a viciously barbed ending as a star-studded cast brings a rare piece of comic theatre to the Festival Theatre in the run-up to Christmas.

All the elements are there for a grand night out as a ten-strong cast of well-kent faces such as Julie Wilson Nimmo, Gordon Kennedy, Sara Crowe and Jimmy Chisholm are asked to take on the roles of primary school children putting on a school nativity story for their parents.

It certainly looks great. The set is oversized school furniture – including glass case complete with stick-insect – and succeeds in making even the Festival Theatre's large stage look small. It dwarfs the cast, making the idea that they are naive little seven year-olds all the more real. Even Kennedy, who played Little John in Robin Hood.

The raw material of Tim Firth's script is pretty good too. The adaptation from his 1999 TV movie The Flint Street Nativity works well – although a few Liverpool references have been missed in the process that jar in an Edinburgh setting.

Director Joanna Read has even succeeded in keeping her cast in check.

The idea of Jane McCarry, still best known as Isa in Still Game, and Colin McCredie – Taggart's DC Stuart Fraser – battling it out as wise men over who carries the Frankincense or Gold, is fraught with possible tensions.

Not to mention Crowe as a headstrong Angel Gabriel who thinks that she should be Mary instead of Wilson Nimmo, whose Mary certainly has a touch of the Miss Hoolie in her. Or Chisholm as the bad boy of the class who fancies Mary so won't let poor Ryan Fletcher's Joseph stay at the inn.

As the well-observed details of young children at play unfold, it becomes apparent that there is something deeper going on. Not least through the reworked carols sprinkled throughout the show, which allow each child to reveal the raw details of their relationships with their parents.

For all that the truths they unwittingly speak are amusing, there needs to be a strong twist to give those truths a perspective. And sadly, when that twist arrives, the company suddenly find themselves undone by the venue itself.

As the cast, who are top-notch comedians in their own rights, are asked to increase the pace and realism of the play, so their lines begin to become lost in the space. What they are saying is probably comedy gold, but no one is laughing as they can't understand. Worse, for what Firth is trying to say, the details of that twist are lost too.

There is enough there, however, to give Julie Wilson Nimmo's final line a satisfyingly vicious kick. And the cast do deliver much of what you would expect of them. But mostly, the production reminds you why theatre is rarely staged at the Festival Theatre.