Anna Burnside reviews ‘a delightful, if dark’ production.
At the end of a shit day, a shit week, a shit life, Lydia finds herself beside a duck pond with a bottle of gin and every intention of ending it all face down in the weeds.
The pond’s resident swan, however, is having none of it. He evicts Lydia from his nest and suggests that two feet of stagnant water is not the best place to say ‘goodbye cruel world’.
Instead, he suggests one last wild night out - the Swansong of the title - and that he tags along. Which is how Lydia and Swan end up in a bar with Baby Guinness on special offer. Then a sex club. Then the sleeper to London.
This is a reworking of a David Greig radio play and owes something to his 2008 hit comedy with songs, Midsummer. Eve Nicol has put it on the stage - she also directs - and Finn Anderson has added the music and lyrics.
The jazzy music works well, bringing emotional intensity and enabling a framing device that offers some hope of redemption via the power of narrative song.
Paul McArthur is instantly believable as the avian hard man who somehow knows his way around Edinburgh’s debauchery dungeons. Julia Murray has more work to do as the grieving Lydia, numb and nihilistic but ready to be talked round by a smoothie swan.
Two on-stage musicians, Dale Parker and Rachel Duns, provide both the soundtrack and the extra voices required to round out this production and make it more than the sum of its parts.
The Swansong is not really based on the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan, but the name is a cute conceit, and there is a definite spark between the species. It is a delightful, if dark, way to spend a lunchtime.
The Swansong performs at Oran Mor’s A Play, A Pie and A Pint until March 14, 2026. It then tours to the Traverse Theatre (March 17-21) and The Gaiety (March 26-28).
Photo by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.
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