Paisley Arts Centre, then on tour February/March 2005

WHAT DO you do with a surly hero? In a novel it doesn’t matter if your central figure is unpleasant because you’ve always got the voice of the author to compensate. That, at least, is what happens in ‘Boiling a Frog’, Christopher Brookmyre’s half-thriller, half-satire of Scotland and its new parliament.

When a wayward PR guru, acting on behalf of the Catholic church, threatens the democratic process with his murderous power games, the character who saves the day is Jack Parlabane, an imprisoned investigative journalist who spends most of the novel moping about his wife’s adultery and his own impulsive response to it.

In the novel, we allow his indulgences because Brookmyre can offset them with his own very funny authorial voice. Stick Parlabane on stage, however, and all you see is a surly character.

In 7:84’s adaptation, written by Christopher Deans and directed by Lorenzo Mele, the journalist is a narrator who leads us through the ins and outs of the plot from his cell in Saughton prison. But, played by Gary McInnes in the spirit of the novel, he is an unsympathetic guide – the more so for underplaying the gags he does have – making it hard for us to care about his eventual victory.

Being imprisoned, he’s also out of the thrust of the action for much of the time, which makes us uncertain about whose story this is. We have the baddy in the form of Ian Beadie, the manipulative PR man, played forcefully by Stewart Porter, but the remaining characters are either too morally ambiguous or too briefly around to give the play a clear ethical centre.

As an account of the key events of the novel, the adaptation serves its function, but it gives too sketchy an outline of the psychology that causes those events to happen. To understand, for example, the behaviour of spin-doctor Elspeth Doyle, played with gusto by Linda McLaughlin, we have to appreciate the influence of her Old Labour father and her devout Catholicism. Deans alludes to these things, with this and other characters, but doesn’t find a way to dramatise them.

It makes the clash of values less apparent which diminishes both the comedy and the politics of the book. It leaves us with a briskly staged synopsis that has neither the broad popular touch you’d expect from Brookmyre, nor the political bite you’d expect from 7:84.

Highlands and Island tour dates:
Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, Thursday 17 February 2005
MacPhail Centre, Ullapool, Saturday 19 February 2005
Universal Hall, Findhorn, Wednesday 23 February 2005
Village Hall, Ballachuilish, Thursday 24 February 2005
Birnam Institute, Birnam, Wednesday 2 March 2005

© Mark Fisher, 2005

Related Links:

• 7:84 Theatre website