Theatre reviews: Off the Rails | The Splitting of Latham
A moving one-woman debut kicks off a fresh era with style, writes Joyce McMillan
The Splitting Of Latham, Queens Park Govanhill Parish Church, Glasgow ★★★
This week sees another new chapter in the eventful history of Scotland’s short-form new play powerhouse, as A Play, a Pie and A Pint expands on its existing Edinburgh relationship with the Traverse to take four late-season productions to Assembly Roxy, a venue until now untouched by the joys of lunchtime theatre with pies.
It’s therefore good to report that the first lunchtime show at the Roxy will be a smart and brilliant professional playwriting debut from writer, singer and musician Stephanie McGaraidh, who also performs the show herself. Off The Rails is a one-hour monologue with songs in which McGaraidh’s character, Maggie, finds herself, on the morning of her 30th birthday, throwing herself aboard the 11.11 am train from Glasgow to Aberdeen, intent on running away from her life and starting afresh in some Norwegian forest.
And despite the odd ScotRail delay – announced in suitably genial style – the show gradually emerges as something of a hymn to public transport, as Maggie ends up sharing a table with a wild hen-party heading for Dundee, a scarily attractive man who blots his copy book with some terrible train manners, and an elderly widower who imparts slightly implausible amounts of wisdom.
The point, of course, is that each of these encounters teaches Maggie something profound about human connection; about the value of friendship, the futility of romantic dreaming, or the wisdom to take a chance on life. Along the way we learn about the teenage trauma that triggered Maggie’s flight; and if there’s a sense of some weakness or incompleteness in that backstory, the details are so entertaining that it hardly seems to matter.
McGaraidh’s live-looped music, songs and rap sequences – cleverly woven around 21st-century train sounds and rhythms – are powerful, interesting and endlessly inventive; her characterisation of the other passengers often hilarious. And in the end, there’s something seriously moving about her decision to square up and head back towards the imperfect reality of her life. This is a first play full of promise, from a writer and performer who looks like a new star on the Scottish theatre scene.
While Off The Rails features one performer playing many characters, The Southside Group’s latest show, The Splitting Of Latham – at Queen’s Park Govanhill Parish Church over the weekend – offered us a rare chance to contemplate six actors all playing aspects of the same character. Created for a Benchtours production in 1991, Michael Duke’s play tells the tale of John Latham, a scientist who conducts an experiment that causes his personality to split into living, breathing fragments.
For this production – involving Glasgow’s leading theatre group offering opportunities to adults with learning difficulties – the company, with directors Catherine Gillard and Pete Clerke, have set Latham’s story against the backdrop of the mighty 1938 Empire Exhibition at Bellahouston Park, perhaps the greatest celebration of scientific progress ever seen in Scotland; so that when Latham’s Amazement, Irritability, Hilarity, Confusion and Glee suddenly appear, running around looking pretty much like him, the Exhibition provides the perfect setting for the chaos and confusion they cause, not least to the scientific establishment.
There’s so much potential to this idea – thematically, historically and theatrically – that the short length, 45 minutes, barely seems enough time to touch on the issues raised, far less explore them in a satisfying way. Yet a fine central performance from John Howell as Latham and the sheer commitment and enjoyment of the whole 15-strong company make for a witty, invigorating show-with-songs about a special moment in Glasgow’s history; with a narrative climax to relish, at the top of the Exhibition’s 300-foot Tait Tower, an Art Deco masterpiece demolished – like almost all the festival buildings – almost as soon as the Exhibition closed its gates, for the last time.
Off The Rails is at Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh, 29 April-3 May. The Splitting Of Latham, run ended.
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