Theatre reviews: Who Are You?

Who Are You?, Lyceum/Pitlochry Sound Stage ****

Bat Out of Hell, King’s Theatre, Glasgow ****

A woman called Vivian returns home to her small house somewhere on the west coast of these islands. She is not young; her working life is done, her children are raised, and she has come here to try to live in peace.

Peace is what she will not be allowed, though, in this final play of the opening season of Sound Stage, the series of eight audio dramas produced since March by Pitlochry Festival Theatre and the Lyceum Theatre.

Who Are You? is a new 45-minute play by leading English playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker – whose 1988 play Our Country’s Good, set among British colonists and convicts in 18th century Botany Bay, is one of the great classics of post-war British drama – and like some recent work by that other great female genius of the stage, Caryl Churchill, this play offers us an image of an ordinary woman suddenly confronted by the forces of global crisis and looming extinction.

In this case, that crisis takes the form of a Presence, whom Vivian discovers waiting in her home. The Presence is not quite ghostly and not quite human; it seems to represent both those humans deliberately dehumanised by those trying to keep them out of the world’s wealthier zones, and also, increasingly, the whole of the natural world, no longer able to tolerate humankind’s endless destruction.

The Presence has just one demand: that Vivian shares her home with her and her children; and it soon becomes clear that Vivian finally has no choice in the matter at all.

It’s a simple parable, set a few years into the future, and written with tremendous economy and power; and in Amy Liptrott’s production Georgie Glen as Vivian, and Saskia Ashdown as the Presence, give two exquisitely intense and well-pitched performances, full of wisdom and ferocity.

A beautiful and ominous musical score by Nicolette Macleod forms an essential third voice in the drama; and although Who Are You? is not always an easy play to hear, it offers the sheer pleasure of an encounter with a brief and perfectly-shaped piece of art, that knows its own purpose, and fulfils it without a single wasted word or gesture.

There’s also an imagined dystopian future on stage in the Meat Loaf tribute musical Bat Out Of Hell, which briefly visited Glasgow last week.

Featuring book, music and lyrics by original Meat Loaf songwriter the late Jim Steinman, Bat Out Of Hell is a 2017 musical loosely based (like the original album) on a Peter Pan narrative, in which the future world is divided between a wealthy elite who live safe lives in glass towers, and “lost ones” who live outside, and because of genetic changes, are forever aged 18.

When the city governor Falco’s cherished daughter Raven falls in love with a Lost Boy called Strat, all hell therefore breaks loose, to the sound of a blazing playlist of Meat Loaf songs from Bat Out Of Hell to I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That).

There are times, during the evening, when it seems as though that playlist may never end – there are around 20 songs on it, all performed at a musically repetitive full length. It’s hard to resist the sheer energy of the show’s 20-strong company, though, led by Rob Fowler as Falco, Sharon Sexton as his increasingly rebellious wife Sloane, and Martha Kirby as Raven; or the superb rock sounds belted out by musical director Robert Emery and his seven-piece band, during a long evening of pure bliss for Meat Loaf fans.

Who Are You? available to listen 29-31 October, via https://booking.pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com/events/ and https://lyceum.org.uk/whats-on/production/sound-stage. Bat Out Of Hell at the Playhouse, Edinburgh, 1-5 February, and His Majesty’s Aberdeen, 22-26 February.

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Theatre reviews: Who Are You? | Bat Out Of Hell