Theatre review: From a city balcony, Glasgow

EDWIN Morgan's long life may finally have ended, last August; but his poetry still captures – among many other things – the heart and soul of Glasgow, the city he loved, and lived in for most of his 90 years.

This new show from the Tron's Young Company is in many ways a classic piece of devised youth theatre, barely 40 minutes long, and designed to accommodate a large cast of 11 in the small space of the Tron's Changing House.

Yet by setting the show in a rough-and-ready Glasgow cafe where the clientele all talk, reflect and rhyme in words and situations drawn from Morgan's poetry, director Lisa Gregan and her young team of actors create something warm, funny, deep and truthful from what could have been just another tale of a Glasgow night out, involving too much drink, and a tangle of bad sex.

The show could perhaps have dared to explore a little more of the lyrical beauty and intellectual challenge of Morgan's poetry, rather than focusing mainly on his cheeky yarns of Glasgow literally caught with its trousers down, its skirt up, and the contents of its stomach on the pavement.

But the writing still glitters with unexpected moments of exquisite joy; and the material inspires an extraordinary series of poised and humorous performances from its young and gifted cast, with none of the unevenness that so often weakens youth theatre work.