As triple whammies go, this one-woman dissection of 21st-century cultural identity is on a winner from the start. While literary groupies expecting the title of Denise Mina's dramatic poem to be a red herring before the crime and punishment of her usual oeuvre kicks in, so too will the protectors of the Hugh MacDiarmid industry be left gasping for breath.
Fans of Karen Dunbar expecting some TV-friendly knockabout routine will be similarly agape at just how serious the country's funniest woman can be. Because Mina's national (though not nationalist) icon may be a magnificently bucket-mouthed binge-boozing refugee from a hen night clad in garish pink plumage, but her dissection of this particular small nation in waiting tells it how it is in scabrous fashion.
So, as Dunbar gradually divests herself of her going-out finery, pot-shots are aimed at the well-heeled hijackers of Robert Burns who get to be roaring boys one night a year, Burns Night. Also in the firing line are the Holyrood third-raters who harp on about freedom for a people they're spectacularly unaware of.
Of course, it could be the drink talking, but Alison Peebles's production allows Dunbar to let rip on Rita Gurn's eye-poppingly tartan set, breaking all the chocolate-box taboos in a way only such a well-kent face can get away with. Yet there's real depth to her turn, which may be as in-your-face as chucking-out time on Saturday night, but never feels like you're being ranted at. More power to Mina in a comic turn possessed with insight and bite.
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