Theatre reviews: Dead Girls Rising | Dungeons, Dragons and the Quest for D***

Dungeons, Dragons And The Quest For D***, Oran Mor, Glasgow ***

On their website, the Hull-based theatre company Silent Uproar promise “glitter-filled political nights out for a younger crowd”; and they certainly deliver all that, and more, in their show Dead Girls Rising, seen at the Traverse in Edinburgh this week.

On a stage laid out for gig theatre – drum kit at the back, centre stage framed in colour-shifting neon – this five-strong company of women (plus a bloke on drums), sing, play, rage, scream and glitter their way through the two-hour story of Katie and Hannah, two young 21st century women in a northern English city who spend too much time being afraid.

They are afraid partly because an older student at their school has been abducted at a bus stop near their local park, and never found; partly because of their own encounters with threatening men, and of the pervasive marketing of fear in our culture, not least towards women. And when their fear matures into rage against the constant threat of male violence, they find that they have conjured up the Furies of ancient legend, who arrive in the form of a female rock group belting out heavy metal via three thundering guitars, and cursing the legacy of the playwright Aeschylus, who tried to domesticate them to a male-dominated form of “justice”.

The arc of the story follows Katie and Hannah’s attempts to navigate that rage, as they begin to pursue very different paths in life. The music of the Furies expresses a raging and often gleeful urge towards retaliatory violence against men; but in the show’s powerful climax – superbly handled by Helen Reuben and Angelina Chudi as Katie and Hannah, and Izzy Neish, Zoe West and Rebecca Levy as the Furies – that answer too comes under question, as Maureen Lennon’s subtle and vivid script and lyrics, and Anya Pearson’s terrific music, lead us towards the conclusion that a new world, and a new way of dealing with violence against women, is not only possible but necessary.

There’s less rage, but an almost equal scepticism about the way the world currently organises itself, in Laila Noble’s two-hander Dungeons, Dragons And The Quest For D***, the latest Play, Pie And Pint lunchtime show at Oran Mor.

Wiley is a cheerful non-binary bedroom-dweller who pretty much spends their life playing online games, and striking up virtual friendships with fellow players. Wiley’s pal Finn, by contrast, is a shy gay man who thinks that he may, in real life, have just met The One. And the fact that this dream-boat’s name is Richard – easily shortened to Dick – only adds to the hilarity, as straight-talking Wiley tries to persuade Finn to conquer his demons of shyness and hesitation, and get on with this new relationship.

Laila Noble’s dialogue is fast, furious and brilliantly funny, stuffed with references to the gaming world, and magnificently delivered in both English and British Sign Language, with added on-screen surtitles. Bea Webster, as Wiley, is an absolute star in the business of turning BSL performance into eloquent theatre, and Ciaran Stewart, as Finn, is a fine foil to Webster’s performance, taking us on a touching emotional journey through Finn’s painfully hesitant private life.

In the end, the play’s attempt to cure Finn’s shyness through a complicated online game – boldly streamed to hundreds of followers by the shameless Wiley – becomes a shade too hard to follow or believe; and the dialogue runs out of steam, in a long-drawn-out conclusion. Yet the comic energy and impetus of the play’s early scenes is truly memorable; and delivered with flair by two remarkable actors, and a writer-director as talented as she is bold.

Dead Girls Rising, run ended. Dungeons, Dragons And The Quest For D*** is at Oran Mor, Glasgow, until 26 May, and at the Macrobert Arts Centre, Stirling, 28-31 May.