A Play, a Pie and a Pint
Oran Mor
Glasgow
Oct 2nd-7th

Script:  Stagecraft:  Performance: 

Trips to the toilet, cups of tea, banging your head on the desk, these are standard diversions for any scribbler with writer’s block. Time to get your mother out the cupboard and have a chat with her urn; after all it is the tenth anniversary of her passing.

Ivan (Stephen Clyde) looks back a decade, reflecting on the relationship between his mother and himself at the time she discovers she is dying. Fifty years of smoking has lead to terminal lung cancer, ashes to ashes indeed but this is a woman who knows her own mind. No daft bucket list of extreme sports thank you, she is happy in her own home. Besides, every time she’s out and coughs, the neighbours phone their weans to get their name down for the hoose. Clyde handles this demanding one-man performance with confidence, zinging Glasgow barbs in the voice of Ivan and his mother, as both use humour to cope with impending loss.

Events in Ian Pattison’s excellent play, the shift of control, the need for the younger person to communicate in the world of the older, the physical indignities, all will be familiar to those who have experienced loss of an elderly parent. An engaging piece of theatre that is poignant, funny and true.

Reviewer : David G Moffat