27/02/24

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

It’s a wet and miserable February day, but we don’t care because A Play, A Pie and A Pint is back – and if I say the new season starts with a whimper, that’s no bad thing. Because the whimper belongs to Jack.

And Jack is a puppy.

At first, our protagonist (Lawrence Boothman) isn’t too enamoured with his Christmas present. He doesn’t like dogs. They smell and they piss everywhere and they require a lot of care. But he can’t say that to ‘Him’, his un-named partner, can he? That’d be ungrateful. “Aw,” he says instead. “You shouldn’t have. Thank you.”

Of course, it doesn’t take Jack long to win the protagonist over, vet bills and chewed-up espadrilles notwithstanding. And when ‘He’ is killed in a car accident, Jack is both a source of comfort and a reason to go on.

Appealingly directed by Gareth Nicholls, Jack is a witty, engaging monologue, effortlessly straddling the line between acerbic humour and devastating emotion. Boothman reels us in from the opening lines and we’re absolutely with the protagonist as he mourns his lover and struggles to cope with his grief.

Liam Moffat’s nicely-crafted script paints a convincing portrait of a man adrift. The protagonist doesn’t know how to be a widower; he’s too young; there’s no template for him to follow. Heartbroken, he rebuffs his London friends but, away from the security of his crowd, he’s startled by the homophobia that denies the importance of his relationship and excludes him from his partner’s funeral.

The set, designed by Kenny Miller, is suitably simple: a raised platform with a sparkly backdrop, a single plastic chair and a ticker tape bearing captions for each successive ‘chapter’ of the protagonist’s story. Dogs really aren’t just for Christmas, it turns out.

So Jack gets this PPP off to a flying start. No, I’m not crying. You are.

4.4 stars

Susan Singfield