26/03/24

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Hotdog (Chloe-Ann Tylor) is all dressed up and ready to party! 

Wearing a garish hired costume and carrying a handbag, a phone and a bottle of lemonade, she’s leaving the sanctuary of her flat and heading off to an undisclosed location to strut her stuff. Outspoken and full of pent-up bile, she is determined that tonight she will be the life and soul of the party. She will dance and drink and curse and laugh out loud! She will sweep aside anybody who has a single bad word to say about her and show them who’s the boss.

But, as is so often the case, her forced exuberance only exists to mask a deeper, darker truth. Because something bad happened to Hotdog in the recent past – something that it’s going to take her a very long time to come to terms with.

Written by Ellen Ritchie and directed by Beckie Hope-Palmer, with an enchanting central performance  by Chloe-Ann Tylor, the latest piece from A Play, A Pie and a Pint is an astutely observed drama that deals with the subject of trauma. Tylor (most recently seen by B&B in  Same Team: A Street Soccer Story and in the fabulous Battery Park) talks directly to the audience, discussing her character’s uncompromising, no-holds-barred approach to life. She tells us about her apparent hatred of her over-protective mother and her revulsion for the kind of fridge-magnet things that people are prone to say to her. 

As she chips steadily away at the brittle carapace she’s constructed around herself, the real story gradually emerges – and it’s utterly heartbreaking.

Tylor is joined onstage by Ross Allan, who at first undertakes the role of a silent stage hand, ensuring that props, music cues and sound effects are there whenever Hotdog needs them. It’s only in the poignant final stretches that he becomes Andy, the proprietor of the chippy where Hotdog tends to finish up her evenings. As in his previous role, he is exactly the helping hand she needs, the one who keeps a caring eye on her. He’s also the bearer of a truth universally acknowledged – that Joni Mitchell is the greatest lyricist of all time.

Kenny Miller’s set might at first glance seem overly complicated, but all those meticulous white lines on the floor – like Hotdog’s motivation – eventually fall into place.

4 stars

Philip Caveney