Tron Theatre, Glasgow, 11 September 2008, and touring

Fleeto

YOU’D THINK a play that made reference to a video game called Olympus Wargods and described an inner-city CCTV camera as a “Cyclops eye” would be over-burdened by its classical learning. But Paddy Cunneen’s Fleeto is nothing of the kind.

The 70-minute play is a genuinely successful marriage of 21st century concerns – namely, the prevalence of knife crime ¬ and the structure of ancient Greek drama. Direct, punchy and stripped back, it is a thrillingly intense piece of theatre that gives archetypal shape to a problem too easily forgotten with the publication of another day’s headlines.

First seen as a lunchtime drama in Oran Mor’s A Play, a Pie and a Pint season in Glasgow, Fleeto is now on the road for an extensive Scottish tour under the auspices of Alison Peebles’ V.amp company. Peebles stars as the mother of a student who has been the innocent victim of a knife-wielding mob (“fleeto” is west coast patois for a gang) who are in the mood for random acts of violence in revenge for the stabbing of one of their own.

Echoing the journey of King Priam in Homer’s Illiad, this mother resolves to confront her son’s murderer. Her aim is not to continue the cycle of violence, but to find some sort of understanding and break free of it. Cunneen does not present the murder as anything other than stupid recklessness, but neither does he ignore the connection between poverty and violence. His anti-hero Mackie, mesmerisingly played by Jordan McCurrach, is at once responsible for his actions and a victim of circumstance. The closer the mother gets to seeing this, the less she can despise him.

All this might be so much liberal guilt-tripping were it not for the vigour of Cunneen’s urban poetry. Structured on a series of big, heart-on-sleeve speeches like the Greek plays of old, Fleeto sucks us into the intensity of the moment whether it be the yell of the mob, the cruel shock of a stabbing or the realisation that your child is no more. There are compelling performances too from Neil Leiper as a shell-suited hard man and Stewart Porter as a world-weary policeman, helping extend the play’s range from an isolated act to a matter that concerns the whole of society.

The production is playing to large audiences of teenagers who surely respond to the energy of the language and the anti-knife message. But it would be wrong to dismiss the play as simple agitprop, because it has a classical resonance that makes it a much more rewarding experience.

(Fleeto plays at Wick High School, 30 September; Red Shoes Theatre, Elgin, 1 October; Fortrose Community Theatre, 2 October; Universal Hall, Findhorn, 3 October; Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, 4 October).

© Mark Fisher, 2008

Links

• Alison Peebles
• Mark Fisher’s Scottish Theatre Blog