A Play A Pie and A Pint

Oran Mor Glasgow

Mon, 25 April, 2016 — Sat, 30 April, 2016

Script:   Stagecraft:   Performance:

Written by Kay Singh, the third recipient of The David MacLennan Award, Selkie is slightly confusing with its mix of Scottish and Japanese storytelling. Directed by Caitlin Skinner, recipient of the 2014 Tom McGrath Maverick Award.

Meet Mac (Ross Mann), pill popper and hapless drunk in his wreck of a flat. He is having premonitions/illusions (take you pick – it is never clarified) of masked spiritual guides who persuade him to travel to his home island without any need of a ferry. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to roll up your trousers and wade over to an Scottish island of your choice? CalMac wouldn’t be so pleased but it would mean our islands would be accessible for all. Such is the nature of artistic license that Singh employs to convey that perhaps his mother is a Selkie that inexplicably disappears in search of skin when Mac was younger, probably putting him on his path of inebriated misery in the process.

Equally aloof Old Man (Keith MacPherson) is Mac’s unwelcoming father who won’t invite him in after so many years apart. It is only when Mac pleads with him that he begrudgingly lets him stay, never letting his whisky out of his sight. What a charmer! The Woman (Melanie Jordan) is never given a voice , sad and passive throughout. This play is in need of some humour to keep the audience wanting to relate to the central character who – despite a good performance – seems to be a lost cause.

  Reviewer : Clare Crines