Theatre review: Falling/flying, Glasgow

Published on Friday 8 April 2011 20:31

FALLING/FLYING TRON, GLASGOW ***

Expectations are high around this small but vivid show in the Tron's Changing House studio. The writer, Stef Smith, was the woman behind the text for last year's mighty Edinburgh Fringe hit, Roadkill, and the director, Ros Philips, has just completed a hugely successful run as a trainee at the Citizens'. This latest work, a 50-minute theatrical poem called Falling/Flying, goes boldly to the heart of transgender experience, using two voices – one male but also female, the other female but also male – to explore something like the life-story of a young transsexual who lives life briefly but to the full – with pain, with fear, but also with moments of contentment and ecstasy – and then dies young, from a cancer apparently related to the many drugs he has taken, in the quest for a female form.

Falling/Flying seems like a script in development, rather than a fully fledged piece of theatre: it bulges with ideas and approaches to the subject – political, observational, mystical, erotic, tragic – without finding a structure that gives a clear view of these all these gems of perception and poetry, and ends up sounding a shade repetitive.

Philips's production, though, features a stunning central performance from Gordon Brandie as the female voice, with strong support from John Paul Murray, as well as a beautiful green/white hospital-room set by Jessica Brettle, with projections by Kia Fischer, exquisite lighting by Malcolm Rogan, and powerful sound by Barry McColl. There are shades of Angels In America here, as well as of the documentary film Paris Is Burning, widely referenced in the text.

But Falling/Flying also brings a new sensibility to the subject, rooted in the streets and bars of Glasgow. I hope this rich theatrical experiment will have a continuing life, if only because its potential seems almost boundless.