Arts reviews

THEATRE ROYAL, GLASGOW

ANTHONY Shaffer's Sleuth – visiting Glasgow in this new touring production starring Casualty star Simon McCorkindale – is one of those plays that misses greatness by a hair's breadth. First seen in 1970, Sleuth is set in the Wiltshire home of Andrew Wyke, a writer of detective novels who resents all aspects of the modern age, from the welfare state to the fact that upper-middle-class Englishmen no longer rule the world. In particular, he hates his wife's half-Italian lover, Milo Tindle; and so invites him to the house for some mental torture involving a threat of murder.

The play sets itself up as a vigorous critique of the English obsession with country-house whodunits and the mentality – "snobbish, outdated and ignoble", says Tindle – of those who want to continue to live in that world. The problem is that the dramatic structure – revolving around Wyke's charm and fast-talking scams – contradicts the idea that he represents something rotten and reactionary; so much so, that the programme describes the play as a "salute" to pre-war detective stories, rather than a satire on them.

So it's perhaps not surprising that Joe Harmston's conventional-looking production largely succumbs to these confusions; or that McCorkindale – trying to conjure something restless and interesting out of Wyke's character – sometimes throws his lines around in an inaudible rapid babble. The result is a relentlessly wordy evening in which two unpleasant men try to outdo each other in nastiness, while one cracks off-colour reactionary jokes; and 38 years on, I'm beginning to wonder whether any new production could find much more in Sleuth than that.

CALL IT SLEEP

ORAN MOR, GLASGOW

BRIAN Pettifer is a fine actor, acclaimed for his recent superb performance in The Drawer Boy at the Tron Theatre; but on the evidence of his first outing as a playwright for the Play, Pie and Pint lunchtime season, he would be well advised to stick to the acting job. His short three-hander Call It Sleep is a festival of deliberate bad taste poured into the format of a cheesy middle-aged rom-com; and to say that the two don't match is an understatement.

The play is set in the Glasgow flat of widowed Mum Rosie and her twentyish daughter Susie. They are celebrating Hogmanay, and waiting for the bells; meanwhile Susie quizzes her mother about past boyfriends, eliciting some lurid and surreal stories of teenage sex in the 1970s.

On one hand, Pettifer wants to hold out the possibility of romance for Rosie, after years of lonely parenting. But on the other, he seems transfixed by the idea of getting women to talk dirty on stage, overloading the dialogue with rude one-liners, and using his characters to some heavy-handed taboo-busting on subjects from disability to diarrhoea.

There's the odd flash of real, fast-talking Glasgow wit. But Juliet Cadzow as Rosie, and the lovely Kim Gerard as Susie, can do little with dialogue that's often more embarrassing than shocking; and by the time Sean Scanlan appears, as Rosie's long-lost admirer, this rough-edged, slightly sleazy little play has long run out of steam.

JOYCE MCMILLAN

MUSIC

AVRIL LAVIGNE

***

CARLING ACADEMY, GLASGOW

ALTHOUGH she is all grown up now at 23, Avril Lavigne still looks and sounds like most of her teenage audience, with a dash of crazy colour in her hair, sparkly eyeshadow, tomboy T-shirt and skull-and-crossbones logo embroidered on the knee of her jeans just to show she's a teeny bit rebellious.

However, this is rebellion Disney-style. Lavigne can let out a bratty punk scream when she wants to, but her set was full of carefully manicured, high-energy guitar pop. Neither an outsider icon nor charismatic star, she is more of an Everygirl performer, eager to show off her one-handed cartwheel, her limited drumming abilities and her collection of pink, sparkly guitars – for which, sweetly, she elicited enthusiastic squeals from the fans.

This was the first date of her world tour, which may account for the perfunctory performance, only enlivened by a troupe of dancers. Lavigne's voice sounded thin and shrieky, but the audience came to sing along and there was plenty opportunity for that during the opening Girlfriend, Complicated, My Happy Ending and the belting ballad I'm With You.

Energy levels picked up in the encore, which featured Toni Basil's Mickey and maximised the cheerleader potential of her own catchy catalogue. She rounded off her routine with the obligatory Sk8er Boi, the quintessential teen melodrama which may become her musical millstone as she tries to ease out of eternal adolescence.

FIONA SHEPHERD