Kill Johnny Glendenning - The Royal Lyceum Theatre wiv MAD CYRIL

Gawd luv DC Jackson, but thass one-oh-one stuff. Ya wanna protect the neck ov some hack, you gotta put ya good lads on the case, not a coupla muppets who are frettin abaht gettin shit on their shoes. Nofing I like more than a saucy caper, and that Johnny Gildenning is quite the geeza. Still, ya won't catch me gettin tied up by my business partners. Never go inta the farmhouse alone: ain't ya seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, son?

Kill Johnny might look a bit like one ov those Guy Ritchie numbers - shit gangsters and hard-nosed romance, but it's all west coast Scotchland, innit? The sorts seem to be in charge, even when they're Keif or on the Shawshank, and Johnny boy goes abaht wearin a Ranger's top. Not sure whever he's a football lad or a grafter. As for the gaffa, Andrew... well, I know his type. Smarts suits and more likely to give ya GBH ov the ear ole than a propa slap.

Still, I'm propa havin this: Johnny is a stand-up geeza, like ya want in ya crew. Ready for a bit ov a tussle, knows it's an act and can calm dahn when needed. Tries to keep orff the collateral. Those muppets turn out ta be the main men, kind ov, an it's happy endins all round, long as ya ain't been shot by a granny afta havin a dump, ground up inta pig-feed or burnt alive (betta than gettin ya meat and two sliced, I sppose). It's a laff, innit?

Still, I reckon the fight scenes could uv been a bit more tasty - really see the knife goin in, know what I mean?

Am I havin it? I am havin it SWAG.

The Trouble With Double

Morality, of course, remains in fashion. The triumphs against the repressive models of moral stricture - such as censorship of the theatre (1968), Clause 28 (rather later than it ought to have been, frankly) - haven't removed the necessity of moral limitations on the arts, but shifted the grounds. While once the representation of homosexuality was either prohibited or satirical - it isn't that simple to reclaim John Inman as subversive - arguments about attitudes towards gender or sexual identity remain dynamic.

It is, however, less fashionable to critique a play on the grounds that it is morally obnoxious. That kind of talk harks back to the complaints of St Augustine (who saw theatre as a distraction from God) or The Daily Mail, which would probably worry about the impact on the children: either that, or it's political correctness gone mad.

I'm probably political correctness gone mad: certainly, my moral parameters are unrecognisable to conservative values. I'd rather see Empress Stah get naked and drink her own blood than see an actress in bra and panties during a lunchtime play - although I can see how, if the matter is simply 'area of flesh exposed,' Stah must appear more immoral.

And finally, I get to The Trouble With Double. It's part of the Oran Mor's A Play, A Pie and A Pint season. I'm not sure whether to begin with the good things or the bad things. The bad thing is that I would, in fact, ban this play - or at least this production of it.

(Of course, I wouldn't really ban anything. I am committed to a liberal anti-censorship argument: liberal in the sense it is vague. I don't begrudge the cast and crew getting paid, I don't begrudge the audience the cheap laughs or the vulgar titillation. The problems that I have with D.c. Jackson's script aren't really that is represents a serious threat to morality or social order.)

Let's start with the good. D.C. Jackson might be the closest thing that Scottish theatre has to a poet - in terms of word wielding, Jackson has the same fluid facility that marks Russell Brand out from the cornucopia of comics, a dizzying command of alliteration and the well framed phrase and fable. Like a poet, Jackson bombs on the punchlines - many of the gags require only a blast from a trombone to become more obvious than the Conservative Party's duplicity. But he can sling words around the stage with the energy of a cage full of chimpanzees flinging faeces.

And Kenny Miller can direct up a story. Trouble never relaxes, keeps the pace fiercer than Beyonce: despite the weakness of the plot's premise (yes, it's an identical twins farce), it moves sleekly to the inevitable resolution.

Johny Austin and Robert Jack and Louise McCarthy do the business on stage. Jack is a geeky sex-pest, not without charm. Austin is the timid groom to be. McCarthy gets to play both limpid wife and sexpot sister.

If as Aristotle says, the plot is more important than the characters, and both are more important than the ideas therein, Trouble  might get a pass. Sadly, Jackson wasn't too fussed about characterisation. All three actors are playing off the shelf personalities, and when McCarthy strips down to her skidders, a horrible truth is revealed.

This is a pilot for a 1970s sit-com that never happened. The ingredients are all in place: the men are hopeless, driven by insecurity or sexual opportunism. The women are either malicious and sexual or prim and demanding. So much talent is wasted on something that Sid James might lend an ironic bite. To the left, we have a scene from the action. Feminists are quite justified in taking this as a reading for the show's temperature. They are also correct to ask why the woman is dressed in an erotic manner and the man... do I have to be PC Gone Mad to object to this?

It is a sex comedy that is neither erotic nor self-aware. It is dated, trivial and, when it relies on the jokes in the script (that is, when cast or director aren't pushing the funny by their performances), it is like a saucy postcard source book.

Now the critic decides: am I to moralise, or judge the play on its performance? If the former, then PPP are banished beyond the city walls, until they can be more mature about sexuality. If the later, they ought to get a raise.

The Marriage of Figaro @ The Lyceum

I know that it isn't cool, and it betrays my staunch West Coast isolationism, but I am becoming fond of the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh. It does have a reputation for presenting plays that people might have heard of, which is anathema to my Live Art pretentions: there have been Shakespeares and Oscar Wildes on the programme in the last couple of years. And yet... they seem to be willing to back risky new work, support a young company and update classics relevantly. I guess I'd classify them as "healthy".


Delving into my rucksack, I just found a press release for their Marriage of Figaro. Now that I getting on and losing my hair (and the pony-tail only emphasises the bald patch), I am increasingly fascinated by opera. The grand scale of the passions, the swell of the aria, the high production values and the technical skill...


This is the play, though: and it has been given an up-date by Glasgow author DC Jackson, who kicks it from the world of the French aristocracy into the contemporary world of high finance. It's a sweet touch: Beaumarchais' original poked fun at the decadent fools who annoyed their nation so much that they ended up on the wrong end of a revolution. Here's hoping the second time's a charm...


Jackson is best known for his sardonic My Romantic History, a really dark comment on relationships, or the family life trilogy of The Wall, The Ducky and The Chooky Brae. His skill is using vernacular language to get at the big ideas beneath the mundane. That, and his bawdy sense of humour. 


Relocating the action to bars, and with sexual politics on the boardroom table, Jackson's vision chimes with director Mark Thomson's. "Power and sex have always been a rich mine  for drama both in tragedy and comedy," he says. "The plotting joy of the original Beaumarchais has been joyfully transposed by DC Jackson into today’s post merger world of finance where it’s the bankers and not the aristocrats who abuse power as love, lust and money contend for the most important currency in the universe.”


Plus, it has Mark Prendergast in it, who seems to be able to do anything from pantomime to tragedy. 

LYCEUM TICKETS & PERFORMANCES:

Performances: 23 March – 14 April 2012

Evenings: Tuesday – Saturday at 7.45pm  

Matinees: at 2.30pm                                                                                                                         

Box Office: 0131 248 4848