Theatre
Tir Na Nog
Oran Mor, Glasgow
Mary Brennan (27/5/19)
****
CLEARLY Dave Anderson’s mini-musical has been biding in its own haven of eternal youth - this perky revival emerges as fresh and appealing as when it premiered at Oran Mor in September 2006.
Back then, the central role of The Poet was performed by Myra McFadyen, while in 2007 the late - and sorely, sadly missed - Pauline Knowles played the itchy-footed entertainer who rackets around from port to port in search of a new and adventurous lease of life. Now, Dave Anderson is taking on the role, with Annie Grace, Brian James O’Sullivan and Allan Tall as his ready-for-anything musical accomplices.
Anderson as The Poet does, however, shade in some quirky new aspects to the character. Tir Na Nog - a mythic island where no one ever grows old - means one thing if you’re a twentysomething, and quite another as the decades fly past. So there’s now a rueful edge to Anderson’s lyrics about time flying past and uncharted opportunities simply ebbing away.
Not that his Poet is on the cusp of codgerdom: far from it. When an early song becomes a rollicking shanty, Anderson kicks up his heels in a jaunty hornpipe (choreographed by Darren Brownlie) - there will be more song’n’dance hi-jinks as the Poet takes to the seas as an onboard piano-man, forced to recycle the Manilow tunes beloved of couples who cruise.
Which reminds me... although some of the narrative has autobiographical echoes, the low-life ditty about being a hooker in Amsterdam belongs to the fantasy side of the Poet’s reminiscences and toweringly tall tales. The songs are a treat in themselves. Tuneful, with occasional nods towards pastiche, and lyrics that are gallus with improbable rhymes.
Grace, O’Sullivan and Tall are just the bees knees: whether harmonising on vocals, playing various instruments, acting or hoofing, they are the finest fellow-travellers the Poet - or indeed the director Davey Anderson - could wish for.
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