TAG, Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow, and Highland school performances 2006

Keith Macpherson as Frank with Nalini Chetty and Andrew Scott-Ramsay. (photo - Tim Morozzo)

WHEN THE actors of Glasgow’s TAG theatre company turn up in your school hall, you might think they’re taking the Mick. They’ve got no set, no stage, no costumes to speak of – nothing more than a couple of chairs. It doesn’t look a promising way to fulfil playwright David Greig’s aim to entertain a teenage audience with a story of Hollywood-style excitement.

But as fans of radio drama will tell you, the best pictures are always in your head and, thanks to what amounts to a masterclass in storytelling, it’s no time at all before we’re being swept away from the supermarkets and street corners of Inverkeithing to the wilds of the Highlands.

Subtitled ‘The Ballad of Leila and Lee’, Greig’s play is about two teenagers who are forced to go on the run when one of them, Lee, stabs his mother’s boyfriend in an argument. Remembering that his estranged father had retired from a life of crime in Glasgow to a Highland estate, he persuades the ever-silent Leila to head north with him.

One of the strengths of ‘Yellow Moon’ is its frankness. This is most immediately apparent in its use of bad language and references to sex and drugs. They haven’t sanitised the play for a schools audience and it’s all the more credible for it.

But Greig’s straight-talking goes deeper than that. His characters might be on the run like Bonnie and Clyde, but there are no Hollywood certainties in their portrayal.

Lee, played by a believably lanky Andrew Scott-Ramsay, is an unreconstructed bad boy with a shop-lifting habit whose greatest ambition is to be a pimp. Yet without being sentimental, Greig slowly reveals the lonely child within. He looks like a chav, but his cap is the one his father left him as a boy: by never taking it off, he’s holding on to the wide-eyed innocence of a child.

Leila, meanwhile, given a heart-warming portrayal by Nalini Chetty, is so much more than the quiet Muslim girl on a fast-track to academic success. In reaction to the complexities of an indifferent world, she’s sealed herself off behind a wall of silence and taken to self-harming in an effort to feel more real. For all her school achievements, she’s as insecure as her unlikely partner in crime.

Such frankness extends to the decidedly unromantic ending, giving the story a bitter-sweet taste of truth. With an excellent soundtrack by Nigel Dunn and equally strong performances by Keith Macpherson and Beth Marshall in the older roles, director Guy Hollands has shaped a perfectly judged production that’s well worth going back to school for.

© Mark Fisher, 2006

Links

• TAG Theatre