Anna Burnside reviews a ‘hugely playful and inventive’ production.
In a Victorian parlour, three people are gathered around a piano. So far, so cosy. But when one is a possible killer, another is her French lover and the third is a pamphleteer desperate for a juicy story, the temperature quickly drops.
The Glasgow Poisoner is the story of Madeleine Smith, framed through the eyes of the Victorian equivalent of a tabloid reporter, told through the medium of song and, occasionally, dance.
It’s a cute, peppy way to tell the tale, charging through what’s established to have happened and then gaming out various different what ifs to fill in the blanks history left behind.
Was Emile L’Angelier a fortune-hunter and a blackmailer? Was Madeline Smith, who was tried and found not proven, a gallus besom or a young woman groomed by an older man? Writer/directors Jen McGegor and Tom Cooper posit these scenarios and more in a modern musical that is not afraid to revisit history through a 21st-century lens.
It’s hugely playful and inventive - there’s a tremendous sex scene played out purely on percussion instruments. The whole show is reminiscent of the Edinburgh Fringe hit How to Win Against History and could easily be scaled up into a similarly shiny production.
The cast keep it just on the right side of melodrama. Chiara Sparkes is a delicious Madeleine: saucy, unrepentant and fully committed to the big numbers which include a tremendous arsenic dance which rhymes complexion with erection.
David Joseph Healy gives great Gallic charm and is the gracious butt of all the jokes. It’s hard to believe it’s Morgan E. Ross’s professional debut. As Plume the pamphleteer, they have real stage presence and do a grand job of narrating the factual portion of the story then changing key to grapple with the ambiguous outcome of the case.
Musical director and arranger Samuel Macdonald on the piano pulls it all together, with occasional help from the cast on percussion.
It’s fun, it’s thought-provoking and it’s even timely as the not proven verdict has just been binned in Scottish courts. Lunchtimes don’t get much better than this.
The Glasgow Poisoner performs at Oran Mor’s A Play, A Pie and A Pint until September 27, 2025. It then performs at Paisley Town Hall (October 8-10) and The Gaiety in Ayr (October 15-17).
Photo by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.
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