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| Edinburgh : A&E : Theatre: Reviews |
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Theatre listings > Still Life.
- The Traverse Theatre's Revival of The Slab Boys Trilogy as part of their
40th Anniversary Season. The
Slab Boys and Cuttin'
a Rug are the other two plays.
How do men grow up, or do they ever? After watching the last play in the Slab Boys Trilogy and encountering ex Slab Boys, Phil and Spanky, laughing becomes increasing painful. Byrne's third play doesn't offer closure despite the deaths of persons and relationships in it. But there is bleak hope just visible spiked by that barbed comic viciousness which protects our withering Scottish soul. Both acts are set in the same grave-strewn cemetery. In the first act set in 1967, after fellow ex-slab boy Hector's cremation, Spanky now also known as George, tries to reconnect with a Phil who still exercises his nasty sarcastic side. Spanky's trying to break into the pop scene while Phil's art diploma has yet to paint him a rosy future. Both know they've 'got to get outta here' but neither know how to create their own luck. Lucille's now married to Spanky and rearing their child while he plays with his band down in England, she's still glamourous and arrives with news of a big break if Spanky can get himself to Manchester in time. Turning up too is Jack another ex-employee from the carpet factory, now plookless and a gents outfitter. But he still leaves clarty despite his attempts to appear the smart wide boy in his appallingly loud check suit. You suspect people buy things from him just so they can escape, John Kazek delivers in full measure Jack's unctuous presence. They're all equally trapped by their small town, and the belief that the American Dream can 'be builded' from Paisley's slabs. They may not be transcendent like Blake, but in the second act we find Spanky returning 5 years later and catching up with his friend in the same graveyard. Phil is waiting for the headstone for his recently interred mad mother. He's still painting but it's Spanky who's got banjaxed by fame so he and his band is meeting celeb Scots like Rod Stewart in the USA, and he's got the habits to match. As the workman, Michael Mackenzie gives us a man who may manually dig holes in the earth but has got an integrity all the others have yet to find. On Neil Warmington's set the staging with its narrow thrust and gravestones is exceedingly cramped, concentrating too much of the action at a distance from the audience on two grim wooden benches set either side the entrance at the back. There's a desperate humour in the play rising out of these characters whose lives can't given them the nourishment they need. But where there is life there is hope, and though Byrne has yet to carry the story on to a fourth episode, you sense that with Lucille behind him it's Phil who'll eventually paint himself out of the corner many aspiring artists never escape. Cuttin' The Rug is the best of the three but as a trilogy The Slab Boys
does present a troubling and challenging picture of work place bullying,
temporary escapes from lacklustre everyday life and of how few really
escaped to a freer life in the years in the last half of the twentieth
century. For many Scots things have got better materially at least, but
for many others it's a hard slog in life where too little changes and
too much is still the same. Rooted in the Scottish theatre's love affair
with slices of under achieved lives and terminal case comedy, only Byrne's
Cuttin' The Rug fully yields the deep warp and weft of universal resonances
so all can appreciate the Paisley pattern. Theatre listings >
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Still Life - Traverse Theatre Production. bottom to top Phil
- Paul Thomas Hickey, Spanky - Iain Robertson and Lucille - Molly