Lorna Irvine reviews the latest lunchtime theatre offering at Oran Mor.
Rona Munro's Guilty, directed by Marilyn Imrie, wobbles a tight wire between police comedy and Grimm’s fairy-tale, only just avoiding toppling over into predictable adult panto with a brilliant performance from Lesley Hart.
In a cute twist on the wicked stepmother trope, she plays tightly wound Detective Black, a lady in her mid-thirties who is herself stepmother to two wayward twenty-somethings, offspring of the older man she's in an increasingly fractious relationship with.
Blanca (a jarring Louise Ludgate with a wandering Aberdeen accent) is all sugar and spite, a seemingly kooky forty-year-old numpty dressed like a CS Lewis child (red party frock, fluffy cardi and white socks) who has her own secret involving her missing stepmum, Bunty.
Pretty soon, Blanca's irritating foibles and curveballs (banging on about apples, dark woods and living with small men, seven in total) trip up the exasperated 'policequine', who displays a less than professional attitude in dealing with her, and it's clear she's not as daft as she seems: the interrogator is thus interrogated.
So it is all a little toothless, and obvious in its denouement, but Hart's meltdown, killer quips and a nicely handled ending mean it's not happy ever after, or simply a black and white case.
RSS