SATURDAY night where everybody knows your name, and the permutations are endless. Especially in the last chance saloon that is Vegas, a Glasgow bar with ideas above its station where the drinks are scarlet and blue, and the cabaret is left over from vintage Opportunity Knocks. The real cabaret, though, is provided by the locals, led by Dan (Sean Scanlan) and Nancy (Barbara Rafferty), who've been getting it on secret, and Didi, awash with the loveless contempt familiarity breeds. Put into the picture a pair ''physic artistes'' who inadvertently conjure up Dan and Nancy's long-dead partners and the scene is set for a good night out to end them all. Until next week.
From the moment Vegas's larger-than-life swing doors open, it becomes evident Glasgow's Raindog Company, who devised this piece in a record-breaking five weeks with Hamish Macbeth writer Daniel Boyle, had moved on considerably from the artless, shambling wrecks of their early productions when it seemed the lunatics had taken over the asylum. For while director Stuart Davids could still exercise more restraint and discipline on his cast of 12, in the main the broad, cartoonified characterisations work, making one think of the rabble-rousing stream of ne'erdowells that crawled absurdly through the bars of both Under Milkwood and Ulysses. Not to mention Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) with whom, celestial spouses Gracie and Dave have much in common with, as they watch over proceeding unseen, prompting a spate of confessionals that's not been seen on the west coast since the Pope visited.
While all this ties things up a tad too neatly, not to say long-windedly, Love, Lies, Bleeding remains a blackly tender look into the workings of little lives each chasing after the elusive good time that might just transcend them to a better place. A ghost of a chance, says it can happen.
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