THE time is a Saturday afternoon, and in the lounge of his expensive boat, bought for weekend display, big boss company partner Piers is patronising and bullying humble employee Bob, before coming clean with the details of the convenient lie he needs
Bob to tell, in order to protect him from insider-trading allegations. Meanwhile, up on deck, their two nine-year-old sons – chips off the old block, from Will's bullying manner to Charlie's girlish fear of fights and spiders – re-enact the same conflict; and the same gradual shift of power from the obvious alpha male to the more subtle, metrosexual survivor.
This is Lydia Adetunji's tiny new micro-play for the Oran Mor Play, Pie and Pint lunchtime series; and at barely 30 minutes, it combines a fair amount of promise – and a strong, topical subject – with an unresolved structural clumsiness, notably in the constant interruption of both conversations by irritable banging and thumping from the other deck. The play is depressingly ill-served, though, by Tessa Walker's poorly-paced and physically awkward production; and by a pair of performances, from George Drennan and Richard Conlon, that seem under-rehearsed, and barely thought through at all.
There was a chance, here, to use Adetunji's slender text to say something timely about the macho business attitudes that have brought us to our present crisis; but it's a chance that no-one involved in this lazy production seems interested in taking.
The full article contains 249 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
