A Play, A Pie and A Pint
Oran Mor, Glasgow 
Feb 13-18

Script:   Stagecraft:  Performance:  

Set in the basement of a Granite City office block as profits from the black gold are declining, Rona Munro’s two hander yields a bounty of drama and black humour. A frightened young cleaner tells her older mentor that she’s been grabbed by the uncle (not a family conflict but Aberdonian for ankle) except she couldn’t have been because the supposed grasper is… a corpse. Not only that, the head wound has bled all over the white carpet, a nightmare for the two women charged with keeping the premises spotless.

Dressed in monochrome uniforms that reflect the repetitive dreariness of their twilight occupation, Lorraine (Karen Fishwick) and Muriel (Joyce Falconer) disparage the malicious Mr B over his dead body, while debating the identity of his assassin. The more experienced Muriel’s deduction of character from desk content and debris, is a delight worthy of Sherlock Holmes.

Office politics and romance, thwarted ambition, secret pasts, all are skilfully unveiled with gesticulating Marigolds, in a drama peppered with memorable lines. It’s a whodunit so ‘lips tighter shut than a mussel at high tide’. The play moves to Aberdeen next week where uncles and other kin will not be disappointed.

Reviewer : David Moffat