Theatre

#71

Oran Mor, Glasgow

Mary Brennan

***

OH DEAR, what can the matter be? Three old biddies, in a conservatory. They were there to hear Chrissy’s big bombshell - and we were there, a jam-packed audience, to see Karen Dunbar’s first ever play.

So what is #71 about? On occasions, it’s about darker realities than the pawky humour might suggest. Chrissy (Dunbar herself), Jean (Maureen Carr) and Clare Waugh (Coco) met at primary school: Jean and Coco were Chrissy’s closest chums, albeit at vicious loggerheads with each other - and now, aged 71, they’re having a re-union at widowed Chrissy’s request. Perhaps if Chrissy wasn’t in the painful clench of fibromyalgia, housebound in her baffies, she’d be chivvying the others into going over the three-score and ten with a geriatric-girlies randan. Trachled Jean could abandon her obese husband and her twice-a-day mass-attending habit. Swanky Coco (who feigns abandon, with the help of gin) could relax her (supposedly French) pretensions and help Chrissy connect with more than her laptop. We’re brushing against the loneliness that so often attends old age here, and the kind of hollow ache that doesn’t respond to pills, or the waccy-baccie that Chrissy is inhaling as she vapes.

If the current draft of #71 - produced in association with the Traverse Theatre, overseen by April Chamberlain in her directorial debut - seems more like a series of sketches than a finished play, it nonetheless has merrily comedic high-points and genuine instances of sad, secret truths being spilled among the friends. There’s astutely audience-pleasing hilarity in the episode where the trio get high on Chrissy’s vape-mix, or when Jean lets rip with her grime rap on religion. The rapport between these three talented performers scoots the humour over cracks in the plotting, with Dunbar an affecting Chrissie at the heart of the matter.