Traverse Theatre,
Edinburgh
5 stars
When it comes, the
ending of Rob Drummond's latest dissection of popular culture is as
devastatingly unexpected as it is prescient. Yet all the pointers have
been sign-posted in a series of keywords that now seem as obvious as
a catch-phrase in a damningly deceptive indictment of celebrity
culture which all telly addicts should tune in to post haste.
It begins simply
enough, as the audience become voyeuristically complicit with the
recording of a typically brash TV game show called False. All the
classic hallmarks are there, from the gaudily coloured sets to the
sharp-suited host to the fawning contestants grasping on to their
fifteen minutes of fame with rictus-grinned abandon. There are no
questions here, only statements, which new girl Sandra, Ben and
reigning champion Molly must get to the truth of. Gradually, however,
the every-day grotesquerie of one of the most formulaic forms of
escapism takes an ugly turn, lurching into the sort of surrealist
territory which is normally the preserve of Charlie Brooker's Black
Mirror series of troubling futurescapes.
Hamish Pirie's
production of Drummond's dangerously incisive piece plays with pop
culture in a way that ultimately damns it. There are times when you
don't know where the hell it's going, as Eileen Walsh's underdog
Sandra is put through her paces in a fashion that resembles a Dennis
Potter style nightmare sequence, but once you eventually realise
what's going on, it's heart-rendingly of the moment.
Pirie and Drummond have
employed a crack comic cast of Walsh, Paul Thomas Hickey, Steven
McNicoll, Gail Watson and Jonathan Watson to make something so
serious that when the applause comes at the end of Walsh's final,
pulverising soliloquy, it damns us all.
The Herald, April 4th 2013
ends
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