Three stars
Such is performer Johnny McKnight's panto popularity that there is a fascinating audience perception problem with Stef Smith's new play for Horsecross and Random Accomplice that precisely parallels the story she is telling.
Peter (McKnight) and Lily (Julie Brown) are obsessed with 60s pop duo Sonny and Cher, to the extent of recreating the 63 episodes of their US television series in the privacy of their own lock-up garage. Director and designer Kenny Miller has great fun with the costumes the couple have for their alternative existence and live performances of the hits soundtrack the piece from the opening title song to an inevitable I Got You Babe at the end.
But this is not the camp tale of dressing up and karaoke many in the house perhaps expected. Peter and Lily are Scots exiles living in the US in 1989, and their seven-year-old daughter April disappeared from the family home at the starts of the decade. Their alter egos are an escape from the reality of being the "psycho-Scots" they have been branded by the tabloid press, and the suspicion that they were complicit in or responsible for the girl's disappearance. The echoes of the Madeline McCann case are only too obvious as the tale unfolds, with Julie Wilson Nimmo the over-friendly pie-bearing neighbour whose attentions are not as innocent as they seem.
Smith's script bristles with memorable lines, and is not without dark humour, and Brown in particular gives a compelling performance as a damaged individual clinging to the hope that "sometimes the illusion of something is enough". But the play is not a comfortable watch, not least because it often seems that the company are still feeling their way towards the tone it requires.
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