Theatre
Fat Alice, Oran Mor, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
THREE STARS
If Paul Simon sang about Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover, then Alison Carr's two-hander, Fat Alice (briskly directed by Joe Douglas), hints at a fifty-first - with a sub-plot that nods in the direction of, shall we say, too many pies...
Peter and Moira's affair was red-hot when first lust kicked in, but now, ten years on, they're like a routine married couple - except Peter (Richard Conlon) is already married, and their routine accommodates his existing family commitments. He had promised he'd leave his wife but, as Moira (Meg Fraser) observes, with an increasing waspishness, there's always a "but". In the interests of Carr's slender plot, there's also a crack in Moira's ceiling which Peter dismisses, with patronising airiness, as silly imaginings.
We've already grasped that there are emerging cracks in their relationship, with Conlon and Fraser bringing well-honed comic timing to combative conversations where he is prone to flim-flam and evasion and she stops being the ever-welcoming doormat. Carr, however, is keen to introduce weighty issues - and not just in terms of why the ceiling sags. Fraser's wretched, angry outburst about trying to be Peter's physical ideal - he likes a bit of flesh on his birds - hooks into themes of body image, and scratches at the reasons why she's gone through soul-destroyng hoops to be second best in his life. We might feel more sympathy for Peter - who bleats that he loves Moira, but loves his wife as well - if Conlon hadn't made the guy so obviously set on having his cake and eating extra slices. Time for Moira to bring the curtain down on their affair - or should that, thanks to (unseen) fat Alice upstairs, be the ceiling?
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