Arts:Blog

Theatre Review: Wasps ***

Anna Burnside reviews the latest A Play, A Pie and A Pint offering.

Rianne dislikes wasps. Especially when the little twats prevent her looking alluring while slurping Pot Noodle and giving the glad eye to a likely lad in the fourth year.

But when her widowed mother gets cancer, Rianne has to deal with a lot more than stinging terrorists drunk on rotting fruit.

Writer Cameron Forbes has put his time as a drama teacher in Dunfermline to good use with this forensically observed tale of a gallus young woman forced to deal with the sticky stuff of adulthood way before her time.

Yolanda Mitchell is a delightful Rianne, keeping her brains under the radar so as not to put off the gormless youths who consider paying attention in class a pointless activity. Mitchell swaps seamlessly into her nicotine-soaked mother and well-meaning but annoying teachers without missing a beat.

The problems here are the wasps. There is buzzing and projections and a cell from a byke on the stage. The script is full of them - Rianne knows a surprising amount about their habits for someone who cannot abide the stinging bastards.

All this is meant to give the play a structure and make a bigger point. But this is Forbes’s first professional production, and he doesn’t quite pull this off. With all the other elements in place, this is a shame - as well as a reminder to look out for what he does next.

Wasps performs at Oran Mor’s A Play, A Pie and A Pint until March 22, 2025. It then performs at the Traverse Theatre from March 25-29.

Photo by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.