Mancub

11 Sep 2006 in Dance & Drama

North Edinburgh Arts Centre and touring 2006

Paul J. Corrigan in Mancub (NTS, 2006)

CYCLING HOME beneath a full moon after the first night of Douglas Maxwell’s ‘Mancub’ I passed two full grown foxes and a fox cub. It was if the strange animalistic world of the play, in which a dog bays endlessly at the moon “because it’s full” and a teenage boy thinks he’s taking on the form of rhinos, flies and birds, had seeped into the evening landscape.

Maxwell’s play was first seen in 2005 in a production by Glasgow’s Vanishing Point. It’s been picked up again now by the newly launched National Theatre of Scotland Ensemble as part of a three-play package touring to small-scale community venues across the country.

Performed in the round on a simple raised stage with nothing more than four chairs for decoration, Matthew Lenton’s production has gained in focus and definition since its well-received first run, and provides an engrossing evening of story-telling theatre that teenagers and adults will love.

The script is a free adaptation of ‘The Flight of the Cassowary’, a long neglected novel by John LeVert which Maxwell discovered as a teenager in his local library. It’s a coming of age story with a difference: as well as coping with overbearing parents, unsympathetic teachers, peer pressure on the football pitch and the mysteries of the opposite sex, Paul has to deal with his darker animal instincts taking physical shape as real animals.

As a goalkeeper, he becomes so territorial that he morphs into a gorilla viciously lashing out at his opponent. On his first date, his sexual urges turn him into a salmon, uncontrollably forcing his girlfriend onto the floor. Initially scared of these metamorphoses, he slowly learns to master his ability, the story always keeping us guessing about whether his transformations are real or metaphorical.

Maxwell’s script is written as a free-flowing monologue and performed by three actors. A fresh-faced Paul J Corrigan is in the central role, cleverly capturing the sense of a good-natured boy who is perpetually at odds with the older generation.

Doing their own form of metamorphosis are Donald Pirie and Cath Whitefield, who embody all the other characters, making lightning changes in age, size and even species – Whitefield makes a particularly splendid dog.

Although the story is LeVert’s, the Scottish setting, language and jokes are all Maxwell’s. He brings his feel for the experience of young people and his facility for a good gag to a tale that touches on mental illness, racism and domestic abuse without being heavy handed or preachy. Whether you’re bullish, dogged or foxy, you’ll have a whale of a time.

(Mancub can be seen at Ballachulish Village Hall, 13 September; Sabhal Mor Ostaig, Skye, 20 September; Victoria Hall, Cromarty, 23 September; Thurso High School, 27 September, with additional dates in the Northeast and Borders)

© Mark Fisher, 2006

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