Theatre
We Interrupt This Programme
Oran Mor, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
two stars
Time was, you could hold just about everything up to useful ridicule: politicians. celebrities – from major to minor – corporate fat cats... the possibilities were a boon to late-night satirists on TV and to many a wee, independent-minded theatre company.
Sitting here, in Oran Mor, it’s hard to avoid bright memories of Wildcat, the resolutely rambunctious music theatre group that in the 1980s and 90s lammed into a commendable spectrum of topics that ranged from loan sharks in Clydebank to US foreign policy in Latin America.
The rorty Wildcat was co-founded by the late David MacLennan – the driving force behind Oran Mor’s Play, Pie and Pint – and Dave Anderson who clearly still carries a torch for Wildcat’s values, and even now brings them on-stage in We Interrupt This Programme.
Times have changed, however. And while the DM Collective – both as a collaborative body of writers and as a performing ensemble – have a host of valid targets in their satirical sights, much of what they set out to pillory in this series of sketches and musical numbers is beyond the reach of barbed comment, mockery or even derision. You simply cannot shame a man like Trump: he’d probably want to annexe one of the show’s mordantly yee-hah! songs, We Want a White Man in the White House a a campaign anthem.
If the material struggles to be entertainingly hard-hitting, the cast – Dave Anderson, Elizabeth Caproni, Cat Crozier and Ross Mann – offset its shortcomings with the kind of barnstorming energy that stokes an audience’s level of engagement and prompts them to come onside... and even laugh.I do wonder, however, if laying into broadcast news – playing the Trump card of ‘fake news’ – is as funny as it might have been before genuine attempts by the media to tell uncomfortable truths made investigative journalists an endangered species.
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 hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel