THEATRE
Lifesaving, Oran Mor, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
FOUR STARS
It's a comedy - has to be. Teenage brother and sister, out in the countryside, with a life-size CPR training dummy as a sidekick - it's already looking ludicrous. In less time than it takes to say "Heimlich maneouvre", however, writer Rob Drummond is picking away the opening incongruities like a half-healed scab: the raw, vulnerable state of these runaways is laid bare. It's still a comedy, but now it has nifty shades of black, with Drummond's flair for wringing irresistible humour out of soul-destroying situations deftly served by director Alan McKendrick and a totally in-tune cast of three.
Jamie (Daniel Cameron) is a lad of very few words. No matter, sister Sandra (Lynn Kennedy) has more than enough for both of them. Garrulous is her default setting, but in among her hyperactive babble - where sex is her automatic "go-to" topic - there are details that explain a lot. Brain-damaged at birth, Jamie is the introverted, mostly silent older brother who - as Sandra loves to remind him - needs her to look out for him. She, for all her worldly chatter, is only fifteen and needs some-one looking out for her: Brian (Ross Mann) is really not that guy. Older than both of them, with a hint of manipulative menace, he abuses much more than their trust. There's nothing in Jamie's obsessively-studied CPR manual to resuscitate lost innocence, nor is there any tourniquet that will stop Sandra's self-deluding fantasies of being loved because she "let a boy in." We can't help but laugh at how she rattles on, wildly skewing adult realities, in mini-monologues that Drummond's ear for language renders spot-on. But oh, there are times we wished we hadn't chortled so readily.
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