Lorna Irvine reviews the latest Classic Cuts from A Play, a Pie and a Pint.
The uneasy laugh in theatre is the one I most favour, as it often strikes at the most unexpected moment and stings like a slap. Alan McKendrick's adaptation of Thomas Middleton and William Rowley's The Changeling delivers awkward, uncomfortable humour so acute you can feel a collective squirm in the audience.
This Renaissance-era tale of murder, sex and jealousy is transported, stylistically at least (but retaining the old dialogue), to the early sixties- between scenes, a very un-PC, cheesy sample follows a young man's guide to 'picking up chicks' on the beach, creating a jarring tone at odds with the play's sinister intent, and the force of nature that is cynosure Beatrice-Joanne.
Paksie Vernon yet again proves, as with her recent performance in Howard Barker's Victory, why she is one of the finest young actors working in Scotland today—her Beatrice-Joanne is spiteful, vain and pathetic, yet glimmers of humanity shine through the pauses in her ripe rhetoric. As her sexual manipulation of the lovesick DeFlores backfires, her white prom dress turns red—the unwilling, if not unwitting, scarlet woman.
The last time Ross Mann and Samuel Keefe were onstage together was in Stewart Laing's adaptation of Genet's The Maids; here, it is a very different pairing, with Keefe playing the insidious creep DeFlores well, beautifully countered by Mann's posturing Alsemero (who gets the biggest laughs as he flexes in ridiculous tiger briefs).
Even the props are a tease- an oversized empty bottle of Hawaiian Tropic sun cream and a loudhailer never used: suggestive of McKendrick's cheeky liberty-taking with the source material.
A nice spot in the shade on the longest day with blinds, and daggers, drawn.
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