Arches/National Theatre of Scotland, North Edinburgh Arts Centre and touring 2006

I FIRST SAW Davey Anderson’s play about a paranoid young man holed up in his Glasgow high-rise last year when it arrived at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre with a clutch of rave reviews from its initial low-key run at Glasgow’s Arches. I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. While the play was an ambitious attempt to frame global politics in a domestic setting, it struck me as being awkwardly structured and overloaded with ideas that were never fully resolved.

Happily, that’s not my reaction on seeing ‘Snuff’ again, this time in a revival backed by the National Theatre of Scotland in its “Unmissable” strand. Unmissable might be overstating it, but this time it strikes me as a focused and forceful two-hander that picks away at a raw wound in contemporary society and, by exposing it, leaves us feeling less comfortable. Perhaps it’s just me, but the performances by Brian Ferguson and Steven Ritchie, under Anderson’s own direction, seem more confident and the writing more to the point.

Ferguson plays Kevin, a betting shop worker who has watched his neighbourhood become deserted, as residents are re-housed, and then repopulated by a wave of asylum seekers. His racism fuelled by a loss of control is threatening his mental stability, making him paranoid, impulsive and violent.

Ritchie, meanwhile, plays Billy, Kevin’s old friend just back from Iraq where he’s been serving in the army. He can see through Kevin’s erratic behaviour, but carries with him his own troubling visions of war. The two characters symbolise a damaged world, their tense conversation reflecting the indignity of Guantanamo Bay, the uncertainty created by mass movements of people and the anxiety stirred up by fear of terrorism. These are pressures, Anderson seems to say, enough to send us all mad.

I still think the play has its shortcomings. Anderson dangles the idea in front of us that Kevin is making snuff movies, but frustrates us by being inconclusive about it. By interrupting the action with video sequences of Kevin’s sister, he suggests something sinister is going on, but leaves us guessing what it is.

The sister looks to be an interesting character, but we don’t get enough of her story. Kevin’s repeated visits to his kitchen are a similar red herring: if he is up to anything dodgy in there, we never find out what it is. There’s no harm in teasing us, but this many loose ends is irritating.

But on second viewing all of this seems less important than the driving energy of the central confrontation and the explosion of undirected anger at a world in flux.

(Snuff can be seen at Lossiemouth High School on 11 November).

© Mark Fisher, 2006