Showing @ Summerhall @ Roundabout, Edinburgh until Sun 17 Aug (not 14, 15) @ 15:50
Wars can have devastating consequences but what happens to the locals after the violence has ended can have equally troubling outcomes. When a wealthy young man is informed that he was adopted he sets out to find his real parents, eventually discovering they were taken by the military coup.
The lead character is a confusing fusion of ages. At times he feels like a twenty-something adult – talking about ‘getting monged’ – but he also plays the part with the exaggerated teenage speech pattern of Kevin and Perry, and at times appears even younger (the breast feeding). This confusion over who he is inhibits the ability to empathise with him – and therefore care about him – not helped by his obnoxious demeanour.
Frustratingly there are absent nouns throughout the text. Perhaps a stylistic decision to chime with the forgotten childhood, it’s distracting and fragments the production’s flow. It’s also problematic to work out where we are. Mentions of favellas evoke images of Brazil but ‘chavs’ is a British term, but then again a military coup sounds more like South America – so why are all the characters white?
The overall plot of the show is quite interesting and could be transposed onto many military conflicts – some still ongoing – but these flaws in the execution (of the play) make it difficult to piece to engage with.