ROB Drummond's previous work includes a number of intriguing, meta-theatre pieces such as Bullet Catch; Mr Write; Wrestling.
Last year he made his A Play, A Pie, and A Pint debut with mock wedding reception drama, Top Table. Here he returns with Rolls In Their Pockets, a quixotic, Beckettian look at pub culture, limbo, Scots' relationship with drink, and the art of forgetting, "ignorance is bliss", to be found at the bottom of a glass.
The setting is a deserted bar where regulars Laurie and Norman, (Lewis Howden and Laurie Ventry), come to chew the fat early doors, and go through the daily rituals that are every drinker's comfort blanket. Drink is a habit that fosters habits you can set your watch by. Or, in Norman's case, set the pub bell by, as he orders yet another Guinness on cue.
Into their early-bird, barfly world enters Jordan Young's young medical student George, in a panic and covered in blood after falling out with his pregnant fiancée.
The tone throughout is very much that of the staring-at-the-abyss black humour of Waiting For Godot, crossed with Patrick Hamilton's eye for the cold comfort camaraderie of pub culture. Howden and Ventry make for an engaging, pint-swigging Vladimir and Estragon. Time, dates, and specifics mean very little here. Any wound or bad memory can be soothed or smoothed over, or at least forgotten, with another swally. At least that's the theory.
The fact the characters are drinking in God's last chance saloon is no real revelation. But the show is given extra heft by top notch performances.
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