Note: This review is from the 2019 Fringe

It’s exam results day. The parents are fighting over where their oldest daughter should go to university – nowhere too expensive, they hope. But she’s lied about her results. She didn’t get the right grades to go to any of the places they’re bickering about, and she doesn’t know how to break it to them.

So she and her sister, Brooke, decide to abscond to Arran to take their gran’s ashes – seated on their mantelpiece for far too long – to their final resting place. Hot on their heels, once their disappearance is discovered, are their parents, a police inspector and a work experience boy, determined to thwart the illegal scattering.

Teenage angst is nicely observed in Trips and Falls. And the Student Theatre At Glasgow (STAG) offer a talented cast. The older, wiser sister is suitably moody and Brooke is entirely sweet. The delightfully unselfconscious work experience boy also turns in a hit performance as the obligatory little old lady in the village shop when they reach the island. The adults are more sketchily drawn, as you might expect from a young writer (Maddie Beautyman), though Mum is genuinely touching when she explains at the close of the play why she’s so reluctant to get rid of her mother’s ashes.

This is a pacey, funny if somewhat flimsy production from STAG. Directors Aimee Buchanan and Sean McGettigan make good use of the stage and the hard-working set earns its keep. This isn’t life changing theatre but it’s great to see Glasgow students supporting new writers and generally having a ball.