Showing @ Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Thu 5 May @ 1pm and 10pm
It’s a mouth-watering chance for satire on May 5th this year as not only are the Traverse hosting their second guerrilla theatre election special, this time on the Scottish elections, voting takes place on the same day for the National Assembly for Wales, the Northern Ireland Assembly, the English local elections and the AV referendum. It’ll be a politician scramblefest (which I imagine to look something like this). Hopefully though it’ll be the SNP and SLP battering the Tories out of office; not that I’m suggesting violence trumps democracy or anything. But seriously, it’s a strange time for British politics as society seems misguided and confused about which ideological path it wants to follow. So perhaps this performance, directed by David Greig and written by numerous playwrights including Rona Munro and Peter Arnott, will call upon those uncertainties. But don’t worry, it’ll all be straightened out when they show the results live in the Traverse bar.
Election night at Hotel Caledonia: as two married couples, a politician-littered bar and a Lithuanian receptionist all try to get their lives in order, politics seems last on everyone’s agenda. As each person tries to make sense of it all amongst the mêlée of conflicting emotions, it seems pretty clear our Scottish writers feel everyone is a bit angry if not confused (probably because Murdoch has managed to brainwash us into thinking literally every single person in Britain is an illegal immigrant). Written in the two days prior to the election, and after the roaring success of last year’s Gordon Brown: A Life in Theatre, it seems we can expect the same rapid exchanges, barefaced ridicule, and hopefully a scene where Alex Salmon(d) slowly transforms into a freshwater rainbow trout and returns to Linlithgow to spawn. We can dream. Either way, there’ll surely be legroom for some spoof metaphors and images, and no doubt a comment on the SNP’s push for Scottish devolution, independence and national freedom. Just don’t mention Braveheart.