Assembly Rooms

24th-30th

15:30

*****

The creation of this eye-catching, wit-soaked, taboo-popping piece of contemporariness was a brave moment in the artistic spheres, but glad I am that RCS-trained Johnny Knight made the effort. Last week I saw a great piece of Dance theatre from wheelchair-bound Catherine Bowditch, & this week – unwittingly I might add – I found myself watching Wendy Hoose. ‘I’m sure that girl has no legs,’ I thought when looking at her as she lay in bed, clad in sexy lingerie awaiting her tinder-summoned one-night-stand. ‘Her legs must be under the bed in a secret compartment,‘ I thought as the covers were whipped from her in shock by said tinder-fellow after he found himself groping thin air. ‘Fu*k, she’s got no legs,’ I thought as she began to move about the bed on her arms. This was real life. Suspension of disbelief had no place in this theatre.

*****

*****

Wendy Hoose, by production company Birds of Paradise, is a true triumph of modernity… the OBP (obama-becomes-president) of the early 21st century that breaks through our Victorian thespianity. Bristling with the comedy forged from the bantering of Paisley folk in full flow, & flavoured with poignant touches every lover can relate to, Wendy Hoose is a wee Weegie masterpiece. Performed to sign-language, which appears as a TV in the bedroom, & with an audio description inbetween the dialogues, Wendy Hoose can be enjoyed by anyone… able-bodied or no. It pushes brusquely at our inbuilt social restraints until they snap & fall to the floor like the shackles of suffragettes, leaving all who observed Wendy Hoose a little wiser, & a little more liberal… an effect very few plays, or playwrights, could ever achieve. As I upped from my seat at the final curtain, a fellow in front of me piped up, ‘that has restored my faith in theatre,’ – which just about says it all really. FIVE STARS

*****

Reviewer : Damo Bullen