Eastwood Park Theatre, Glasgow, 5 May 2009, and touring

Hannah Donaldson (Michelle) and Sally Reid (Norma) - (Photo - Richard Campbell)

WE THINK nothing of feelgood pop songs and lightweight movie rom-coms, but the breezy piece of popular romantic theatre is a rarer beast. Playwright DC Jackson has no weighty statement to make and no inclination to challenge the theatrical status quo, but in The Ducky – a sequel to the equally delightful The Wall – he demonstrates his gift for boy-meets-girl comedy that is as funny as it is tender.

The scene is what the author calls a “noxious, septic Stewarton swimming hole” where the local youth routinely gather during the summer holidays; the more hardy taking to the water to bathe, the more sensible looking on from a distance. It was a place name-checked in The Wall and, now the teenagers of that play have grown up by two years, it is where they meet to squabble, bully, woo, pontificate and play with an intensity only adolescents can muster.

Jackson clearly knows this world intimately and he has an instinctive feel for the language and concerns of his five characters. Behind the snappy comedy there are some darker themes emerging this time around as the clumsy youngsters from The Wall make their first tentative steps towards the adult world of independence.

As Michelle – she of the lesbian mother(s) – Hannah Donaldson is disappointed that her horizons seem little different since entering university. Not only that, but she has to cope with the arbitrary hand of illness and death as it moves in on her family. Fin den Hertog’s Rab conceals his own university disappointments behind the confident swagger of a young man blessed with looks and brains.

Sally Reid reprises her brilliantly observed role as the well meaning but impulsive Norma who must now square the responsibility of a teenage pregnancy with the flighty indecision of youth. As Trevor, Alan Tripney is all skin, bones and forward-combed hair, the geek who – of course – gets the girl, much to the annoyance of Jonathan Holt as local knucklehead Cooney.

There’s a easy familiarity about the scene – the coming-of-age comedy is hardly new territory – but it is given an air of freshness by the raw honesty of the performances in Jemima Levick’s production for Borderline Theatre Company and by Jackson’s wit, humanity and satisfying sense of narrative structure. Take a teenager – they’ll love it.

The Ducky is at the Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, on 12-13 May 2009

© Mark Fisher, 2009

Links

• Borderline Theatre

• Mark Fisher’s Scottish Theatre Blog