The penultimate offering in the National Theatre of Scotland/A Play, A Pie and A Pint mini-season of work looking at the Arab world is a black comedy by Lebanese playwright Abdelrahim Alawji.
Set during an Israeli bombing raid on Beirut, two strangers – a young unemployed graduate, played by David Walshe, and a gruff, older ex-army sniper (Stewart Porter) – take shelter in an underground theatre, only to find themselves trapped, and stuck with each other. The young man is a Muslim, the older a Christian who took part in the Black Saturday massacre. Amid a decomposing audience (us), and with exploding bombs overhead punctuating each scene, they try to live in harmony despite their suspicions of one another, fretting and arguing over food, politics, religion and, somewhat predictably, territory. They also end up fighting over a dead girl (Clare Gray) who has dropped through the roof from the flat above, in a series of Dennis Potter-esque fantasy sequences in which she comes to life in response to their emotional needs.
Adapted and directed by former Suspect Culture director Graham Eatough, it is a broad brushstrokes piece of theatre in which the political metaphors being played out on stage are equally broad – albeit one tinged with a surreal sense of hyper-reality.
Porter, and in particular Walshe, who appeared earlier this season at Oran Mor in Jo Clifford's Sex, Chips and The Holy Ghost, milk the mordant comedy for what it's worth, raiding the dressing up box and their memories as they go. But while there are plenty of laughs to be had, the political discourse covers old, rather familiar ground.
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