Theatre: Love and Death in Govan and Hyndland
Oran Mor, Glasgow
Mary Brennan, four stars
THE early queue at the box-office suggests that many who aren’t season ticket holders have caught sight of who’s written this week’s play: Ian Pattison, progenitor of television’s Rab C Nesbitt - so hopes are high for tranches of belly laughs along with the lunchtime pie and pint.
Mere seconds into this one-man monologue and Stephen Clyde has scored the first chortles of the day, banging his head off the table and cursing, in full-on character as the middle-aged Ivan, sitting at a laptop with a serious case of writer’s block. The reason his creative flow is on hold? It’s the tenth anniversary of his mother’s death but he can’t quite move on because she’s still with him: there’s an ornamental urn on the desk with her ashes in it, but it’s inside his head that his old ma, Katie, is still alive. Filling his thoughts with memories, and reminding him of the unanswered questions he still ponders, about why he can’t commit to relationships.
This is the deeply personal story Ivan wants to write but can’t. He decides to tell it to us instead, with a dry, wry humour that Pattison seeds brilliantly into what becomes a touchingly bitter-sweet narrative. Clyde is soon doing all the additional voices: the doctors who deliver Katie’s death-knell diagnosis, the nice caring hospice woman, but especially Ivan’s unseen mother herself - and the words fill vividly with the Govan accents of a wee wumman who’s had it hard but has stayed valiant. As death descends, this one-act - directed with care and understanding by Alison Peebles - brings loss centre-stage in a speech that witnesses the passing moment with a perceptive dignity. Prepare for laughter, but probably through tears.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here