Theatre
The Persians
Oran Mor, Glasgow
Mary Brennan, three stars
Online petitions didn’t exist when Xerxes led his Persians against the Greeks in 480/79 BCE – but given Xerxes’ headstrong arrogance, it’s doubtful if he would have spent even a nanosecond on sounding out the will of the people when it came to waging war.
Today’s leaders, however, wilfully ignore what’s trending on social media at their peril, although – as in Meghan Tyler’s first play for Oran Mor’s Play, Pie and a Pint (in association with the Traverse Theatre) – trying to surf the tides of popular opinion can be like dancing over uncharted quicksands.
In a sly echo of that old jokey “an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman went into a pub” format, Tyler assembles a Conservative, a Democratic Unionist and a Scottish Nationalist behind the closed doors of a Westminster office for an off-the-record discussion on Government policy.
An online petition calling for the return of the death penalty is gaining signatures and pukka Tory minister, Ian Wellesley (Liam Brennan), along with the SNP’s Kirstin Thompson (Irene Allan) and the DUP’s Mary Rodgers (played by Tyler herself) are desperately trying to cobble together a cross party response.
Where’s Labour? The Welsh? Ah, come on now – we’re in the thick of spoof here, with Tyler setting up political stereotypes like skittles and knocking them down with shout-y insults and some sharp, witty one-liners. The action then hinges on milking the "dram" in this port-soaked drama with the trio reaching agreement (like those Persians again) when blotto, and even maintaining unlikely accord when hungover.
While the cast rise unstintingly to the repetitive limitations of playing outrageously squiffed characters, it does mean that the death penalty issue becomes a hostage to farce, which is a pity since Tyler, like the young, anarchic DUP MP she plays, clearly has an energetic sense of how social media and the groundswells of public opinion are influencing global politics in often unpredictable ways.
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