Theatre review: Hitman and Her, PQA Venues @ Riddle's Court, Edinburgh

After suppressing our excitement that the title might refer to some form of dramatisation of Pete Waterman and Michaela Strachan’s cult late-night clubbing show of the 1990s, what we experience instead is a two-handed comedy thriller which makes far more accurate use of the name.

Hitman and Her, PQA Venues at Riddles Court (Venue 277)

Hitman and Her, PQA Venues @ Riddle's Court, Edinburgh * * *

After suppressing our excitement that the title might refer to some form of dramatisation of Pete Waterman and Michaela Strachan’s cult late-night clubbing show of the 1990s, what we experience instead is a two-handed comedy thriller which makes far more accurate use of the name. Alex Dee is a surly hitman, minding his own business – or perhaps waiting for some business to come along – at a table in a bar, and Lou Kendon Ross is ‘her’; the woman who pulls up a chair and asks if his next job can be undertaken on her husband.

Tim Connery’s play is an incredibly conventional piece of writing, calling to mind a fictional London which is somewhere between the dense soap operatics of EastEnders and the cockney gangsterism of The Long Good Friday. Yet the two leads have an easy rapport which makes their situation believable as a character comedy, and as he informs her that bumping off her husband in particular will create more problems than it solves, repeated comedic motifs about her inability to stop blurting out sensitive names and his desire to know just which Blue Peter presenter is the other woman in the affair command ever-escalating laughs.

Until 26 August

David Pollock

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