Theatre reviews: Whisky Kisses/Wife After Death/A Woman From The North

Published on Wednesday 5 May 2010 19:02

WHISKY KISSES **** THE VICTORIA & ALBERT HALL, BALLATER WIFE AFTER DEATH *** THEATRE ROYAL, GLASGOW A WOMAN FROM THE NORTH **** ORAN MOR, GLASGOW

IT WAS such a fine spring night on Royal Deeside – cool, clear, with soft evening sun – that it seemed unlikely that anyone would choose to spend it in the Victoria & Albert Hall at Ballater, watching the last sturdy survivor of the great quest for a Highland musical, launched back in 2006. Yet by half past seven on Monday, the hall was packed. And by ten o'clock, I guess there was not a man, woman or child in the place who didn't feel that they had had their money's worth from this new Right Lines production of Whisky Kisses; indeed more than they ever bargained for, when they set out for the evening.

Created by Euan Martin and Dave Smith, Whisky Kisses is a clever and sometimes complicated show about a rare and ancient single malt whisky called The Glenigma, and about the quest to buy the last surviving bottle of its greatest-ever edition. Big-shot New York financier and whisky collector Ben Munro says he's just gotta have it, and is willing to come to Scotland to get it. But Mr Yomo of Japan also has to have it, in order to please his dying father; and Mary McGregor of Glenigma, now trying to run the failing distillery in her late father's place, has to find a way of persuading these money men to invest in a living business, rather than just buying up its last remaining asset.

Around these three major characters circle five other strong figures, including Ben's gay secretary Jeff, and Dunc and Lachie, the two loyal distillery workers. And among the eight of them – with the help of a dozen complex and interesting songs by composer James Bryce – they begin to sketch out a story about the key Highland question of how to live with heritage, how to share it, and how to enjoy it; while also knowing when to let it go, and to stop living in the past.

It would be wrong to give the impression that Whisky Kisses has achieved perfection. At two-and-a-half-hours, it feels overlong; and during the second half, the storyline almost collapses, in the course of a long ceilidh that has one dramatic point to make, and takes about 15 minutes to reach it.

Yet the show is full of humour and theatrical energy, and a touch of romance, both gay and straight. And in this production, it boasts a tremendous touring cast, deftly directed by Ian Grieve, and led by gorgeous Wildcat veteran George Drennan as Ben, with the beautiful, silver-voices Alyth McCormack as Mary, and Masashi Fujimoto as Mr Yomo, singing a mountain aria that links the Scottish and Japanese feeling for nature to spine-tinging effect. And the show's long list of funding bodies – from SAC to Highland Council – can congratulate themselves on having found an upbeat but sophisticated mid-scale musical that captures both the global and local dimensions of 21st century Highland life. It pleased the crowd in Ballater on Monday; but if it were to play off Broadway, I guess Whisky Kisses would probably win exactly the same response, of recognition, laughter, and delight.

There's another kind of Scottish homecoming on stage at the Theatre Royal this week, where Tom Conti delights his strong local fan-based with an exquisitely laid-back performance in Eric Chappell's new situation comedy Wife After Death. Deliberately old-fashioned in style and approach, Wife After Death is a classic "funeral" drama in which Conti plays a comedy writer called Harvey whose performing partner, Dave, has just died. As his friends and family gather around the coffin, the usual range of secrets begin to emerge – affairs, business scams, hidden antipathies, and a long-forgotten first marriage to a chorus girl in Cromer.

All of this is so predictable that the show has some undeniably dreary moments. But there's no denying the supreme comic professionalism of the production, co-directed by Conti and Tom Kinninmont; or the consummate physical ease with which Conti and the rest of the cast take the stage, conjuring up hilarious little chunks of comic business, in a story which is partly about the comedy of ageing and death, but is also about the absurdity of life, and particularly of sex, which tends to make fools of us all.

Death is one of the great subjects of drama, of course; so it's hardly surprising that many of our finest writers are increasingly fascinated by the slow death that many elderly people now face, in our affluent society. Bernard McLaverty's A Woman From The North, this week's Play, Pie and Pint lunchtime show, is about Cassie Quin, a Catholic woman from the north of Ireland facing a decline into dementia in a hospital near Dublin, where she has spent her married life. As drama, the play often lacks impetus; Cassie's monologue – interrupted by visits from her nurse Gerard and her son Christopher – is almost necessarily rambling and shapeless.

Yet McLaverty is such a superb musician of the spoken word, and such a fine, empathetic observer of humanity, that there's a shimmering poetry to his script nonetheless, and – towards the end – a brilliant use of Cassie's habit of repeating herself, to both tragic and comic effect. And in Eileen Nicholas, the show has one of the finest actresses in Britain, to bring out all its beauty, its subtlety, its cultural sensitivity. Cassie is a woman who will be folding her scarves neatly, and chasing up dust-marks in her little room, long after she has ceased to remember her own name; and in this, there is not only the remnant of her own character, but of a whole culture of dutiful housewifery, slowly fading into history.

&#149 Whisky Kisses is at Portsoy tomorrow, at the Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, on 8 May, and on tour until 22 May. Wife After Death at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, and A Woman From The North at Oran Mor, Glasgow, both run until 8 May.