Anna Burnside reviews and underwhelming production with impressive performances.
Being 17 in a post-industrial mining town in West Lothian is not fun. Apart from the few hours a week when Keli plays her tenor horn, it’s college, Scotmid and caring for her fragile, agoraphobic mother. And swearing. A lot of swearing.
In an unnecessarily complicated plot, told in flashback, Keli finds herself down the pit with a miner-musician hero of a previous generation trying to figure out how history, myth and a stolen brass instrument fit together.
The miners’ strike of the 1980s still resonates and makes for great drama - see the BBC’s recent Sherwood. Brass bands are perfect shorthand for community - see the 1996 film Brassed Off! winked at in Martin Green’s script.
But Green doesn’t know when to stop. Keli has a superfluous subplot about the band leader’s historic grievances, an unconvincing emo maw with authority issues, a sub-Burning Man club sequence and a convoluted strand about the working-class hero holding up a pit prop single handedly.
That, plus the Malcolm Tucker level pacing and cursing, makes Keli a lot.
Final year Conservatoire student Liberty Black rises above it all as Keli, performing with huge heart, getting the brittle/fragile balance just right. Another first-timer, Olviia Hemmati, is tremendous as her Dragon Soop-stealing colleague and the random posh club queen Keli meets in a terrifying London pub.
Billy Mack brings a lot of charm to the ‘man out of time’ role, addressing Keli as Sister Comrade, embodying the aspirational working-class values of the subscription library and the socialist Sunday school.
There’s a great play to be written about the legacy of the miners’ strike. This isn’t it.
Keli is on a Scottish tour until June 14, 2025. For further details, go to the National Theatre of Scotland’s website.
Photo by Mihaela Bodlovic.
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