Theatre review: Hoors

Published on Wednesday 6 May 2009 01:01

HOORS ** TRAVERSE, EDINBURGH

FOR weeks now, playwright Gregory Burke has been telling every interviewer in sight that his new show Hoors – which opened to a packed house at the Traverse last night – is "the disappointing follow-up to Black Watch"; and he's certainly right about the play's quality.

It's a bit of turkey and it hasn't a hope of emulating the global success of Burke's Iraq war drama, inspired by interviews with former Scottish soldiers.

Where Burke is wrong, though, is in relating this show to Black Watch; because in truth, it is the disappointing sequel to his brilliant 2001 hit Gagarin Way. Set in the footballers'-wives-style home of Fife builder Andy, who has died of a heart attack during his stag weekend, the show features a long night of pre-funeral conversation among four characters. There's Andy's fiance Vicky and her younger sister Nikki; there's also Andy's best friend Stevie, and another mate, Tony, who has flown in from Dubai to pay his respects.

Right from the start, though, the situation lacks dramatic energy. Vicky isn't bothered about the death of the man she was about to marry, preferring to reminisce about past sexual encounters. Nikki is a horrible girl, a skinny shopaholic with neither heart nor wisdom. Tony is a sleazy adulterer and compulsive liar; Stevie a feeble emotional parasite with a weird line in sexual banter.

The point that's being made is obvious; all four characters are whores, the men even more so than the women. What's not obvious is why we're supposed to care; or what scope for real, dynamic comedy there is in a play that sounds the same note of relentless emotional and sexual cynicism, and of more-or-less flaccid verbal obscenity. Director Jimmy Fay's four-strong cast find the odd line or moment that vibrates with Burke's special capacity for looking sideways at our fast-changing society. In the end though, he has written a comedy without tension: between the ideal and the actual, between hope and despair, between the two sexes. Small wonder that there's nothing here to spark the verbal brilliance of which Burke is capable. And until he finds another situation that truly inspires him, I guess that special voice in Scottish theatre is something we'll have to live without.