Butterfly Kiss

Leslie Black Photography

An Old Guy visits a “Seaside Museum” on his bus pass, where he finds a Punch & Judy stall. When no-one is looking, he peeks in, and finds himself in the year 1960. He’s 15 years old, and holidaying on the coast of the West of Scotland. Read more …

It’s a world of rock’n’roll, “teenagers”, burgeoning consumerism, rampant hormones, lazy daytimes gazing into rock pools, love of all things American, and A Girl.

Not The Girl he’s left behind and whom he’s afraid of losing to an Older Man (17 years-old). No. An altogether more exotic creature. The one who introduces him to the Butterfly Kiss.

Dwight Eisenhower is President of the United States. Elvis releases “It’s Now or Never”. A message in a bottle is washed up on the beach. People have jobs, making things. There’s only one TV channel, to which only some people have access.

Dave Anderson presents the latest episode in his cycle of mini-musicals for A Play, a Pie and a Pint.

The critical consensus

The show as a whole is extraordinarily moving and powerful; perhaps because it combines a timeless and absolutely heartfelt yearning for a lost moment of youth with a true sense of the political landscape in which this particular sixtysomething life has unfolded, and a deep sense of loss that goes beyond the individual to a whole society, and the ominous future of the earth itself.

(*) Joyce McMillan, 18/04/2013