We Can All Agree To Pretend This Never Happened
Oran Mor, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
THREE STARS
Let's just, for a moment, put down the forks and the glasses and relish the occasion: this,folks,is the 350th production in A Play, A Pie and A Pint (PPP) - David MacLennan's braw and cunning plan for a lunchtime theatre series that has caught on across the UK and beyond. Today's offering hails from Philadelphia and the mischievous imagination of Emma Goidel. The clinically white set, enclosed in a perspex barrier and with those necessary adjuncts to scientific research - a microscope and a coffee pot - prominently on display, is a lab, somewhere in Siberia. The team - two men, two women and the unseen Boris - are sampling the swamp gases that just might pose a threat to humanity if global warming melts the permafrost. In truth, being cooped up far from the crowd back home has led to some warming of everyone's libidinous urges and the usual rules of no fraternising between personnel have melted, and are now threatening to undermine working relationships. It doesn't help that Liz (Sally Reid, as the bossy-boots head scientist) is already in bed with boyfriend Andrew, a very insecure needy dude whose jealousy reaches manic proportions - Robert Jack takes him from nought to hyper-hysteria in screaming seconds. More complications arrive in the fake lab results cooked up by Liz and the bad-at-lying Maya (Helen McAlpine). Liz's hot-shot assistant Lincoln (James Young) will, in pursuit of his own glory, come close to stymying everything. This unlikely comedy of errors, personal and professional, often runs like an American TV sit-com - sharp one-liners, improbable plot twists. They're all directed here for a slickly crowd-pleasing laugh by Joe Douglas - no pretending, we can all agree PPP is an hour well-spent
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