THEATRE
Tommy's Song
Oran Mor, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
FOUR STARS
Christmas is coming, and our pies'n'pints sit alongside bright wee trees and cheery crackers. Tommy (Tom McGovern) had something similar in mind but with turkey and all the trimmings for lunch: a family feast, like the seasonal ads on television, and all for his wee dad, who's dying. You almost feel like passing a hat round, to help this kind, thoughtful - seriously skint - Glesca' guy bring home those Christmas goodies. But writer/director Lou Prendergast is wise to the dark, damaged side to Tommy that, in Jekyll and Hyde mode, cause the charming chancer to lash out.
Our Tommy lights up when he's away with the three B's: booze, betting and burds.He's very cocky about his serial womanising. He claims he's friends with his exes, but that boast wears thin and the truth about his relationships - his past antics, and his jail time - elbows its way into the conversations that McGovern re-enacts in a host of different voices. The monologue is sparked with an attractively chipper humour that McGovern brings characterful spontaneity to, but listen closely and between the lines is an astutely observed portrait of what childhood poverty and family dysfunction can do to a man like Tommy. A violent, abusive father sows the seeds of Tommy's own short fuse. The veneer of affability and sentimental goodwill cracks when, as Christmas looms, the other people McGovern deftly voices either reject him or burst his bubble of self-delusion. He can't understand, or confront, the reasons why the world doesn't see the "real Tommy". The tragedy is that they do, and so do we in a persuasively written and acted journey round an accidental psychopath.
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