Theatre review: Wendy Hoose, Glasgow

SCOTTISH theatre featuring artists with disabilities has been on something of a roll recently, with shows like Claire Cunningham’s masterpiece Menage A Trois achieving international fame.

Tron Theatre, Glasgow

Wendy Hoose

Tron, Glasgow

* * * *

It’s difficult, though, not to feel that this whole creative cycle has reached a climax – in every possible sense of the 
term – with this gorgeous, cheeky and outspoken comedy of bad manners by the incorrigible Johnny McKnight, featuring a Paisley bloke on the look-out for some Saturday night fun via an internet sex website, and a Cumbernauld woman with very little in the way of legs.

Co-produced by Random Accomplice and Birds Of Paradise, and set to tour on to Paisley, Aberdeen, Inverness, and the new Festival Theatre Studio in Edinburgh, Wendy Hoose is not a show for the faint-hearted.

Its language is frank and dirty to a fault, its take on attitudes to disability is unflinching, and it shows more live sex – of sorts – than I can recall seeing on a Scottish stage for a while.

Its assets, thought, are huge – from the heroine Laura’s gorgeous decolletage, through the feisty and well-shaped 70-minute script, to Julie Brown’s brilliant satirical performance as the voice of the audio describer, some superb use of video and graphics, and Neil Haynes’s lush red bedroom set, all packed away in a neat on-stage container.

And above all, it features two fine, brave comic performances from its stars, Amy Conachan and James Young.

See it, if you feel strong enough, but expect to find yourself blushing, at a memorably bold new Scottish sex comedy that pulls no punches at all.

Seen on 11.03.14 


• On tour until 29 March