Theatre
Beg Borrow Steal
Oran Mor, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
three stars
It’s close on three years since David MacLennan – the visionary instigator of A Play, a Pie and a Pint – died. His initiative still flourishes at Oran Mor, and never more so than when the play on-stage is the winner of the award that bears his name. Its emphasis is on finding the new, unknown talent coming through the university courses that focus on creative writing: this year’s winner, Anita Alexander Rae, has an MLitt Writing for Performance (University of St Andrews) under her belt while her first play, Beg Borrow Steal, is currently appearing in a caringly delivered, thoughtful production.
Store manager Tess (Molly Innes) has problems of her own to deal with. We know this from eaves-dropping on that long opening voice-mail to her absent daughter. She’s not in the mood to sort out a shoplifter, but with no-one else available, it falls to Tess to elicit personal details and potentially mitigating factors from the 23 year old Cher (Natali McCleary). A brisk phone call to the police would have stopped the plot right there, but Rae’s two-hander is not about crime, unless you count poor parenting skills, or a lack of loving communication as misdemeanors. She’s exploring mother/daughter relationships that have broken down, and so Cher’s repeat offences – and Tess’s unprofessional turning of a blind eye – become the framework for an unlikely, often prickly, friendship.
Cher’s bleak, brutalising childhood and Tess’s forlorn attempts to reconcile with her daughter come together in a mosaic of loneliness, lost connections, a need for some-one to care. McCleary’s Cher has the bolshie pride and humorous streak that mask lasting hurts, while Innes shades in the weary despair that lurks behind Tess’s brisk facade. Director Nicola McCartney brings pace to the episodic structure and steers the fragile narrative strand away from gluggy sentimentality.
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