Showing @ Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh until Sat 11 Oct @ 13:00 (& Fri 10 Oct @ 19:00)
Fun-packed and frantic, Flame Proof (part of the Traverse’s A Play, A Pie and A Pint series), is a lively lunchtime pick-me-up, albeit one that tends to get carried away with itself.
Lesley Hart‘s play (directed by Andy Gray) paints an intriguing little scenario. Two jilted lovers bump into each other in a wedding marquee on the eve of her ex’s and his sister’s big day, seeking revenge and escape respectively. It’s a springboard for a spectrum of heightened feelings – bouts of rage, impassioned pleading, tears – although this two-hander is largely played for laughs with big, bouncy performances lightening the emotional load.
The onstage energy and the craftily daft premise are to be praised but the play is sometimes too brisk for its own good. The rush to reveal the plot overwhelms the dialogue, leaving little time for the characters to fully form. When Buddy (Billy Mack) first stumbles on stage, for instance, drunkenly sleepwalking in a pair of bad pants and threatening/promising sexual assignations, Lyssa (Michelle Gallacher) barely stops to register the appropriate fear or incredulity before the script whisks her away back to her plotting. We’re left for a moment wondering if these characters know each other and whether Buddy’s behaviour is to be expected (they don’t and it isn’t). The characters can also be found making wild leaps to guess each other’s motives, the speed and short format not allowing them to be led there gradually by the dialogue.
The play is better judged for pure entertainment value. On that score, the laughs are plentiful. In particular, Michelle Gallacher as Lyssa is given some fantastically withering put-downs and pleasingly bitter impersonations of her ex and new flame to perform, and fires them off with appropriate comic rage. Both actors keep the tempo high, their quick-fire banter knitting together seamlessly.
As a swift snack of entertainment Flame Proof hits the spot, satisfyingly filling a lunch hour, but it’s a hurried affair, not something to sit and savour.