Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, October 2003

THE IDEA OF getting three playwrights to collaborate on one play is an intriguing one. Does it produce something three times as confusing or something three times as good? In the case of Gilt, commissioned by 7:84 to celebrate the company’s 30th birthday, it is somewhere in the middle.

If you didn’t know better, you would suppose this contemporary urban drama was the work of a single author – and a rather good one at that – but one who hadn’t quite achieved the narrative structure required to sustain interest in seven disparate characters.

Knowing what we do, it’s tempting to pick apart each playwright’s contribution. Was that a Stephen Greenhorn gag, a piece of Rona Munro polemic or a spot of earthy Isabel Wright lyricism? Maybe yes, maybe no. They’ve covered their tracks pretty well. Better to put authorship aside and treat the play on its own merits.

It is called Gilt, but it could have been called Guilt. It’s about our relationship to money and money’s relationship to our relationships. Over the play’s 90 minutes, the various characters pair off to explore the way our everyday behaviour is distorted by the power of cash. A hospital fundraiser is happy to accept a wealthy woman’s donation until the woman says she wants to specify how the money should be spent. Meanwhile, a father tries to buy the love of his estranged son, and an elderly woman tries to buy the safety of a young illegal immigrant by offering to marry him.

Each instance shows how an apparent act of generosity is counteracted by the obligation that goes with it. The very money that will free you from one prison will trap you in another. Somewhere lying deep behind these questions is a memory of 7:84’s leftwing roots: not only does 7 percent of the population own 84 percent of the wealth, but also, Gilt suggests, the other 93 percent is obliged to them.

Zinnie Harris’s production is credibly acted by an excellent cast – among them Kathryn Howden, Paul Blair, Andy Gray and Neil McKinven – but by giving all characters equal billing, the playwrights deny us a central story on which to focus. No sooner have we become interested in one couple than the attention shifts to another: it’s a plate-spinning act where the crockery starts to wobble. The result is an engaging play that wavers before the end and doesn’t quite deliver on its promise.

Gilt can be seen at Universal Hall, Findhorn, Saturday 25 October.

© Mark Fisher, 2003