25/08/18

Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh

This curiously titled monologue, written by Stewart Roche and performed by Edwin Mullane, is a clever and compelling shaggy dog story. We’re told by the makers that it’s inspired by the works of Edgar Allen Poe, but I’d say there’s more than a dash of Fyodor Dostoyevsky in there and I mean that in the nicest possible way.

This is all about Liam Wilson, a young Dubliner addicted to gambling. He’s looking back over his life and the complex series of events that has brought him to his current predicament. It’s also about the ‘other’ Liam Wilson, a boy at his school with the same name, somebody he is initially suspicious of, but whom he is fated to meet up with at various key points during his life. Is the other Liam the friend he appears to be – or something rather more sinister?

Mullane is a charismatic and likeable narrator – and the play’s simple staging, which uses oversized playing cards to represent key characters in the story, is nicely done. If the eventual revelation doesn’t exactly come as the greatest surprise, well, no matter, because there are things in here that I really haven’t anticipated, and it’s fun just watching the expert way in which Mullane reels his audience deeper and deeper into the narrative.

Assuming you’re reading this on the 26th, you have only one more chance to catch this intriguing production , so why not give it a whirl?

4 stars

Philip Caveney