The Scottish duo behind the smash hit Square Go! return to this year’s fringe with another comedic two-hander about the confusing and tumultuous pubescent escapades of two young lads, Max and Steve. Both Gary McNair and Kieran Hurley are the playwrights behind two of my favourite Scottish plays, namely Locker Room Talk written by McNair and Mouthpiece by Hurley, and both have, in their own right, cemented themselves as some of Scotland’s leading mid career playwrights.
The play opens with friends Max and Steve missing their bus on the way to a party. Their ages are left ambiguous by the fact that the two actors, Scott Fletcher and Gavin Joe Wright, playing these teenage boys are visibly older than twenty-one. But it’s clear by their spot on characterisations that they’re in their early teens. Everything from the way they awkwardly stood to their boyish delinquency felt real, as if we were standing outside a secondary school.
Much like Square GO!, the pace of V.L is full force. Orla O’Loughlin’s direction is crisp, polished and keeps the audience firmly where the performers want them: in the palm of their hands. Most of the audience was riotously laughing throughout. The only joke falling flat was made by the bigoted stepfather, played briefly by Wright, when he asks if the boy would “like to get your fingers wet” when referring to his stepsons’ potential antics with a young girl. The audience collectively groaned, perhaps because this was the one character that was rightfully labeled a bigot beforehand. The lighting and sound design was exceptional, some of the best I’ve seen this fringe, and matched O’Loughlin’s set pace rather than hindering it. All in all, it was a great laugh for the audience and an honest depiction of Scottish young boys’ relationship to girls, women, each other and themselves.
V.L. Is on at the Roundabout, Summerhall, from the 1st to the 25th
Image provided via Summerhall Press Release