Theatre reviews: Thrown | Another Nice Mess
Thrown, Queen’s Hall, Dunoon ****
Another Nice Mess, Tramway, Glasgow ****
On and evening of drenching Clyde coast summer rain, five women gather in the Queen’s Hall, Dunoon, to face a new challenge, and to try to forge themselves into a team. They are actors, of course, used to forming a new company every time they make a new show; but in the fictional world of Nat McCleary’s debut stage play Thrown, they are also five women living in Scotland today, all with radically different lives, but each drawn for her own reasons towards the old Celtic sport of backhold wrestling, played out each summer on Scotland’s Highland Games circuit.
Produced by the National Theatre of Scotland, Thrown is a small-scale touring show rich in quietly magnificent production values, from Karen Tennant’s gym hall set, to superb music and sound by Luke Sutherland and Tom Penny. At the heart of the show, though, stands McCleary’s powerful story of five women struggling to understand and support one another in a divisive world. There’s glamorous would-be influencer Chantelle and her mixed-race pal Jo, drawn together since childhood by tough working-class lives. There’s Imogen, the wealthy black Londoner born in Scotland, now trying to reconnect with those Scottish roots after the death of her twin sister.
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Hide AdThere’s middle-aged Helen, in search of a new life after the end of her long marriage; there’s Pam the coach, strong, silent, and in deeply hidden pain. And as McCleary’s 80-minute drama evolves, this small group of women face up to colossal internal intensions over differences of poverty and wealth, race and gender, nationality and diversity, not least between racially “woke” Imogen, and Chantelle, who cannot bear being lectured on oppression by someone she sees as rich and privileged.
Johnny McKnight’s beautifully-crafted production is fast, smart, funny, and sometimes spectacular, moving between the verbal and the physical with thrilling ease. And if there is no real need for Helen’s beautifully-delivered closing monologue summing up what the play has already told us about the need to tolerate and wrestle through our differences, Thrown remains an impressively brave and vivid Scottish play about the fraught politics of identity in our time; illuminated by five terrific performances from the all-star team of Efe Agwele, Maureen Carr, Lesley Hart, Adiza Shardow, and Chloe-Ann Tylor, as the fabulous and raging Chantelle.
As fans of Edinburgh’s Lung Ha Company know, actors with learning difficulties can often bond themselves into great teams, full of joy and generous humanity; and now, the similar Glasgow-based Southside Group, set up just three years ago by the veteran theatre artists of the Occasion company, has produced a show that fully demonstrates those qualities, as well as a terrific sense of comedy and fun.
Written by Stewart Ennis and directed by Peter Clerke, Another Nice Mess – seen at the Tramway last weekend – is set in late-1940s Glasgow, during a visit to the city by comedy stars Laurel & Hardy. The hour-long story involves a quest through Glasgow’s post-war criminal underworld for a watch of great sentimental value, stolen from Stan Laurel during a visit in 1932; and there’s no end to the fun the 17-strong Southside ensemble are able to generate from this film-noir-style tale, as trench-coated detective Mick McMichael (an inspired Paul Robertson) prowls the back lanes in search of criminal masterminds, helped by members of the Battlefield Branch of the Laurel & Hardy Fan Club.
There are also witty film sequences (by Tim Reid) alongside the live action, and fine design and lighting from top professionals Ali Maclaurin and Paul Sorley; in a strikingly well-made show that succeeds in transporting us not only to the Glasgow of 75 years ago, but also into a world of joyful ensemble work that lifts the heart, and inspires as much as it entertains.
Thrown now on tour until 27 August, to Helensburgh, Ballater, Aberdeen, Oban, Glenlivet, Tobermory, Portree, Dunkeld and Edinburgh. Another Nice Mess, run completed for now.