Big numbers might impress us, but they can also elude us. A million malnourished people in need of ongoing humanitarian aid is hard to codify – Glasgow’s city population is currently estimated at only 596,000. But if you take us into the life of just one individual in a million, the general becomes the particular and, as we sit finishing our pies and pints, a sense of our respective privileges and wider responsibilities gains forceful immediacy.
This, basically, is the drift of Cathy Forde’s two-hander about Scottish charity Mary’s Meals, which provides a daily meal for over one million children across 12 countries. One of those recipients is bright-eyed, business-like Susan (Teri Ann Bobb-Baxter) from Blantyre – as in Blantyre, Malawi. She’s the uplifting proof of how poverty and ignorance can be successfully challenged: a meal of warm porridge in the morning set her up for school and now she’s here – a trainee teacher, but with spare-time ambitions to be a professional DJ. Handyman and pub quiz devotee Gerry (Alan McHugh), had ambitions when he was at school – his were of the drawing and painting kind. He makes self-deprecating jokes about those arty-farty aspirations, because he’s a Glesca’ guy and emotions get buttoned up behind the grotty boiler-suit and the ready banter. Across the hour, there are didactic facts and statistics about Susan’s homeland – ostensibly she’s preparing a class-room lecture – but off-setting these are the elements of personal history and the performances. Bobb-Baxter and McHugh bring a flesh and blood warmth and sincerity to their characters that make their sudden friendship – including the cross-cultures/cross-generational bonding in music – into more than just a well-intentioned campaigning reminder that hungry children, wherever they live, need our help.
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