Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh, 21 April 2011, and touring

YOU’VE got to admire Des Dillon for resolve. Not only has the playwright and novelist raised the funding for this revival of his black-magic comedy seven years after it was first seen in Edinburgh, but he has managed to stage it on pretty much the same scale.

It’s not every day you see a cast of ten playing the arts-centre circuit, especially not with actors of such professional standing. With the seemingly endless tour of his anti-sectarian play Singin’ I’m No a Billy He’s a Tim still going strong, it is clear Dillon does not lack in entrepreneurial flare.

Carmen Pieraccini in Six Black Candles (photo Marc Marnie)

Something has happened, though, to Six Black Candles since it premiered at the Royal Lyceum in 2004. Although many of the original cast have returned for the production, this time directed by John Binnie, they seem to have lost some of the comic rhythm that made the play’s debut such a treat. It is still an entertaining show, with some very funny moments, but the production also exposes the play’s structural weaknesses – the long build-up of act one, the abrupt conclusion of act two – in a way that was not previously evident.

What still has power is the presence of nine formidable women on stage. There is Beth Marshall’s Caroline, caught between crying over the loss of her adulterous husband and seeking vengeance against Stacie Gracie, the 19-year-old babysitter who ran off with him. There is Carmen Pieraccini’s Donna, a goth with a sense of humour as black as her clothes. And there is Kay Gallie’s wonderful Gran, a matriarch whose sweet appearance and dotty behaviour belies a vulgar turn of phrase and a hard-as-nails sense of control.

With them are the various other members of this large Catholic family, a sharp-talking bunch whose sibling rivalry stops the moment it’s time to focus on the ritual of the six black candles. They have gathered in Caroline’s Lanarkshire living room to conduct the most deadly piece of black magic they know. With a pentangle made out of masking tape and the errant husband’s clothes going on the fire, they are here to put a deathly spell on Stacie Gracie in an act of sisterly solidarity.

You’d expect the arrival of Stephen Docherty as the priest would put an end to their superstitious voodoo, but the joke is they make no distinction between the mysteries of their Catholic faith and the absurdities of the occult. It is in the extended scene with Docherty that the production is at its funniest, the women using all means available to run rings around him without him ever quite knowing he’s been had. If the production kept at this level throughout, it would be a triumph; as it is, it makes for a merry, but uneven evening.

Six Black Candles is at Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, on 10-11 May 2011, and Perth Theatre on 14 May 2011.

© Mark Fisher, 2011

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