Theatre

DING-DONG (A Bit of a Farce)

Oran Mor, Glasgow

Mary Brennan

three stars

THE TITLE has some tongue-in-cheek clues as to where we’re heading in this lively comedy of attitudes. Ding-dong isn’t just the insistent chimes of Susie’s busy doorbell, it’s also the fisticuffs – verbal and otherwise – that are never very far away when her next-door neighbour, Jennifer, comes to call. Or rather complain. Susie’s dog barked TWICE at 9.48pm the previous night and – outrage, on the verge of melt-down – Susie’s son threw a tangerine onto Jennifer’s manicured lawn that morning. The claws and bitchy, sniping exchanges are soon out in force, with writer Hilary Lyon – who also plays Susie – lacing her script with the kind of sharp, witty ripostes that are meant to wound where it hurts: in the aspirations.

The title also promises a bit of a farce, and many of that genre’s gambits are in place, nicely accounted for by the cast and a director, Morag Fullarton, who understands the mechanics of improbable misunderstandings. Let’s not spoil the plot twists for Play, Pie and Pint audiences coming to Oran Mor, or the Traverse next week. What’s worth pointing out, however, is the serious side that Lyons weaves into the comic daftness. Gail Watson’s Jennifer is driven to shrieking point, and to acts of vindictive pettiness, because she wants to feel superior to laid-back Susie and her lefty-liberal tendencies. She feels Susie, and especially her adopted son Mikey (Buchan Lennon) – a mixed-race teenager into hoodies and rap music – are a blot on the neighbourhood. Just as well Susie’s new age sister Chrissie (Clare Waugh) lives elsewhere, though her cosmic visualisations add another layer of silliness to proceedings. It’s all delivered at quite a lick and designed to entertain, but with a message nonetheless: let her who is without self-important social pretensions throw the first stone. Or rather, tangerine.

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