Theatre reviews: Sunshine on Leith | The Guns of Johnny Diablo
Sunshine On Leith, Pitlochry Festival Theatre *****
The Guns Of Johnny Diablo, Oran Mor, Glasgow ****
In the great constellation of musical tribute shows, Stephen Greenhorn’s superb 2007 show Sunshine on Leith, crafted around the songs of The Proclaimers, must be one of the brightest stars. Set in Edinburgh and Leith in the mid-2000s, it makes space for all the key aspects of Craig and Charlie Reid’s songs – the intense romantic lyricism, the strong local working-class roots, the sharp humour, and the keen eye for the economic and political undercurrents of the day – through the story of Davy and Ally, two Leith lads who return from military service in Afghanistan to try to make a go of things in civilian life.
From the opening number The Sky Takes The Soul – set on patrol in Afghanistan before their return, and followed instantly by a homecoming dander down Leith Walk, to the cheerful rhythm of I’m On My Way – it’s obvious that Greenhorn’s story is linked to the songs with an almost magical closeness; and it’s a huge pleasure to find that Pitlochry’s Christmas revival of its 2022 staging of the show – powerfully directed by Elizabeth Newman – captures that near-perfect union of music and drama with a gorgeous, open-hearted yet hugely skilful brilliance, as a superb company of 12 both play major roles in the story, and form part of the ever-shifting onstage band.
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Hide AdThe family story of Sunshine On Leith is a relatively conventional narrative, involving Ally’s troubled romance with Davy’s sister Liz, Davy’s increasingly intense relationship with Liz’s friend and colleague Yvonne, and a crisis in the 30-year happy marriage of Davy’s parents Rab and Jean. The intensity of the Proclaimers’ songwriting around the subject of love and marriage, though, gives this simple yarn multiple layers of complexity and beauty, as the company act, play and sing their way through a playlist of more than two dozen wonderful songs, from upbeat classics like Let’s Get Married, through the complexities of Hate My Love For You, to great ballads including Letter from America, and the mighty Sunshine On Leith, exquisitely sung at Ray’s hospital bedside by Alyson Orr as Jean. The sound quality is astonishing, the atmosphere electric; and the message, greeted with a heartfelt standing ovation by a delighted Pitlochry crowd, is that love is not easy, but it is the very stuff of our lives – and that it needs to be celebrated, at least once a year.
At Oran Mor, meanwhile, the final show of the autumn season, The Guns Of Johnny Diablo, is a brilliantly entertaining double satire by fine comedy writer Philip Differ, that takes aim both at the vanities and absurdities of showbiz as a profession, and at the great Western movie tradition itself, in its more cliched forms. In a radio studio somewhere in Scotland, three disgruntled actors – mature Jack, young Kieran, and token woman Millie – gather to perform an anniversary reading of a long-lost film script by a legendary spaghetti western director.
The story of the film itself is pleasingly ridiculous, involving a sharp-shooting “man with no name” – played in superb style by Matthew Zajac as Jack – out for revenge against Johnny Diablo’s gangster crew, Dylan Blore’s Kieran as Diablo’s nervy messenger-boy Chico, and Helen McKay’s Millie as assorted whores, floosies and saloon barmaids. Add the competing psychodramas of the three actors, though – Jack’s ageing-actor vanity and name-dropping, Millie’s outraged feminism, and Kieran’s dazzling line in half-educated malapropisms ("I’m just going to put my head above the parakeet here”) – and you have a genuinely blissful hour of pure comedy, also set to delight audiences in Aberdeen next week, but sadly not to be seen in Edinburgh, this time round.
Sunshine On Leith is at Pitlochry Festival Theatre until 23 December. The Guns Of Johnny Diablo is at Oran Mor, Glasgow, until 25 November, and at the Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, from 28 November until 2 December.