Theatre

Edge of the World – A Digital Detox Musical

Oran Mor, Glasgow

Mary Brennan, three stars

It’s a coincidence that many writers would dismiss as too far-fetched – but it’s for real, folks. On the Monday that the World Health Organisation confirms Gaming Disorder as a mental illness – and our NHS introduces free treatment to those hooked on video games – the lunchtime mini-musical at Oran Mor is about three people in such thrall to their mobile phones,they’ve enrolled at a ‘detox retreat’ on a remote Scottish island.

Addictions, of any sort, are not usually the kind of material you’d want to make a song and dance about. However composer/writer Richard Ferguson – abetted by director John Binnie and choreographer Jane Simpson – has brought a sense of the ridiculous to his characters’ attachment to their digital devices – and a whiff of spooky-possibly-malign intentions to Hamish, the retreat leader, and the other (unseen) islanders.

So who has surrendered their phones and signed up for a week on the outer edge of network coverage? There’s Lindsay (Simon Donaldson), a swaggering hot-shot banker from New York, elegant Annabelle (Isabelle Joss) who claims to be a novelist but is really a gossip columnist and shy teenager Charlene (Katie Barnett) who lives vicariously through her uninhibited, racier online alter ego, Lucia.

Perhaps it’s because all three are intrinsically self-absorbed, still mentally anchored to their confiscated phones, that they don’t really register the ominous undercurrents in Hamish’s rigorous cult-like rituals, or his harking back to pagan times on the island – yes, there is something foul afoot on Foula... Think Brigadon’t meets Wickerman – with the action stopping tantalisingly short of a final solution.

Ferguson – playing Hamish, and the on-stage piano – has enlivened a flimsy script with a mix of musical genres that the cast deliver with the pzazz of showbiz troupers – and they hoof it with elan, as well. Let’s just say appreciatively: ‘no performances were phoned in here…’