Theatre

The Biscuit

Oran Mor, Glasgow

Mary Brennan

Two stars

Oh dear, what can the matter be? Three archetypal stereotypes are shut in a one-act play. They were there for under an hour – by the half-way mark we were wishing they weren’t there. It’s not that the cast didn’t act up as required by Donald Mcleary’s script, here directed by Kate Brailsford.

They each pointedly assumed the accents that defined what class they belonged to, observed the tactics of comic timing that (normally) invite ridicule at the foibles of different classes, and they showed team spirit when attempting CPR on the old-fashioned sketch material that was trapped with them in a bare, grey room with no handle on the lone door to freedom.

The brief is this: the Prime Minister (Stephen Clyde), his wife, who is also the Health Minister (Shonagh Price) and Colin, the cleaner at Number 10 Downing Street (Paul Clark, making his professional debut) have been thrust into what the PM and his wife assume is a panic room, but which Colin knows is a broom cupboard.

Cooped up together, it’s the class divide that opens up the tensions between them with the PM’s sense of entitlement coming adrift when it turns out that Colin has their only potential food supply – the eponymous biscuit. Will working-class Colin share any crumbs from his Wagon Wheel with the stuck-up poshos whose politics he doesn’t support?

The plot twists, such as they are, will not be revealed here – the cast deserve that much, and more. Both Clyde and Price are saddled with trying to make a couple of unattractive, well-worn ciphers worthy of our interest and our laughter. At times, they actually succeed despite the whiff of stale comedy in their situation. Clark, meanwhile, has Colin’s enterprising nature well-sussed, allowing him a wee mischievous streak but – like this review – stopping short of giving the whole game away.