Battery Farm theatre review

Published in the Guardian

Battery Farm

Oran Mor, Glasgow
3 out of 5

It is the democrat's dilemma: what if, having given someone a voice, you don't like what they have to say? That is the situation faced by Kate in Gregory Burke's apocalyptic comedy, a lunchtime collaboration between the Traverse theatre and the Play, a Pie and a Pint series. Kate is an undercover activist who has infiltrated a futuristic "contentment facility" in which old people are stored in life-support units before being fattened for human consumption. While freeing the occupant of row NN, pod 777, Kate is alarmed to discover he was responsible for the death of the environment.

The role is underwritten by Burke and overplayed by Denise Hoey, so the idea does not go very far. But it is typical of the author of Black Watch and Gagarin Way that, even in a piece of whimsical sci-fi silliness, he will throw in such a big ethical problem.

Using the symbol of the serpent eating its own tail, Burke presents a vision of a self-destructive human race that will make any number of moral compromises for the sake of personal gain. The idea of a society that recycles its own flesh in high-end restaurants is darkly funny – especially in David MacLennan's production, where the audience is cast as the pod-bound pensioners – but it is also a satirical comment on a species even now burning up its own future.

The lab operative James is played by novelist Alan Bissett, who has a natural ear for Burke's comic rhythms even if he sometimes lacks physical authority. No such problem for Andy Gray as row NN, pod 777, who enhances Burke's verbal wit with his trademark double-takes and gives us the best orgasm scene since When Harry Met Sally.

Until Saturday. Box office: 0844 477 1000. Then touring.

© Mark Fisher

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Heaven, Traverse/Play, Pie, Pint review

Published in The Guardian

Heaven

Òran Mór, Glasgow
3 out of 5

I had assumed Simon Stephens would have reworked his short two-hander since the summer when the Traverse gave it a breakfast reading on the ­Edinburgh fringe. But here it is in a fuller but still bare-bones production for A Play, a Pie and a Pint, the lunchtime theatre season, with the same oddball charm and the same feeling that its deeper meaning is just out of grasp.

On balance, this is a good thing, not least because Heaven's combination of character comedy, plot revelations and philosophical reflection suit the ­laid-back lunchtime format. Give or take the odd fudged line, Dominic Hill's production makes a lively, if elliptical start to a five-play run of Traverse co-productions.

The scene is a departure lounge where two strangers awaiting a flight to Turin fall into a dispute over some ­litter. Kyle (Sean Scanlan), a 67-year-old former pianist is just the sort of ­busybody the younger Sean (Robert Jack) would sooner avoid as he makes a break for freedom from his job in a North Berwick hotel.

What starts as an amusingly pedantic struggle moves into less certain territory. Behind Kyle's fuddy-duddy appearance lies a bit of a radical – and perhaps something of the deus ex machina – although not radical enough to embrace Sean's decision to escape his idyllic ­family life. In place of a predictable kind of heaven, the father of two has opted for the thrill of the unknown.

The unsettling comedy finds a resolution of sorts in Kyle's incongruous rendition of Heaven, the trippy ode to celestial emptiness by Talking Heads. Whether from a beauty spot or an airport, Sean is escaping from a "place where nothing ever happens", like an artist searching for life whatever the personal cost.

Until Saturday. Box office: 0844 477 1000. Then at Traverse, Edinburgh (0131-228 1404), 2-6 March.

© Mark Fisher 2010