Orphans
SEC Armadillo
Glasgow
4/5
Review by Brian Beacom
COULD the cult film classic that was Orphans find a home in the theatre?
The challenge faced by the National Theatre of Scotland in relocating Peter Mullan’s 1998 Glasgow-based movie was as steep as the city’s Gardner Street; how to maintain the dark, dangerous night-time frisson of fear the city generates – while clinging onto the delicious black comedy?
And of course intersperse this storyline of a broken, dysfunctional family with powerful music that resonates, enhances, entertains, and lifts the hairs on the back of your neck.
It’s fair to say director Cora Bissett triumphed. We were engaged with the Flynn siblings from the opening scene in which the lost, despondent family stood over the coffin of their mother.
The opening beat and huge melody by Roddy Hart and Tommy Reilly grabbed at us like a truant officer.
We were entirely aware this was a Eugene O’Neill-like dramatic world whereby this moment of death would reveal a series of lives having been lived in desperate circumstances.
Oldest brother Thomas (Robert Florence) was shown to be a pious, pompous inadequate, his extra years failing to suggest earned gravitas.
Michael (Reuben Joseph) and John (Dylan Wood) two hotheads who get caught up in drink, stabbing, personal regrets and revenge.
And daughter Sheila (Amy Conachan) although wheelchair bound, is revealed to be the only family member possessing the common strength and conviction to move life forward. But can she exist without a mother to look after?
The storyline hasn’t been altered by Douglas Maxwell’s adaptation – he retains Mullen’s meta detail of the characters’ personalities being the key plot device – and the director factors this in by keeping the pace fast and furious.
And the songs featured a range of powerful material, from short biting beats to sweeping strong musical theatre melodies wrapped incongruously, but effectively around lyrics soaked in dialect as strong as chip vinegar. (Some are not for the faint hearted).
READ MORE: Orphans: Robert Florence and Cora Bissett on new NTS musical
What Orphans could also boast was a quite stunning set design, revealing not only a grand church but fabulous tenement buildings and a working fairground – dodgems and all. And a powerful lighting design kept the setting as wet, dreary and grey as the tone of the piece demanded.
The lead performances were terrific, with Amy Connachan’s warm voice offering the perfect contrast to the deliberate despondency being played out. Dylan Wood and Harry Ward (Tanga) are a great double act, Martin Quinn (Seamus) is a comedy star of the future while Louise McCarthy’s Mrs Hanson is, as always, a laughs guarantee.
This is not to say this is a perfect piece. Too many songs perhaps denied the chance for the piece to breath easily at times. And the back-of-a pub jail scene seemed too surreal even for this production, the croak voice created in the film by Still Game’s Maureen Carr in this setting bordered on the absurdist.
But this is nit-picking. This show should be seen. It’s theatre as its grandest, most daring and loud. We want to go on a journey with the Flynns, to see if they make it not only to the funeral, but out the other side of this Glasgow darkness and into a new life. Together.
Mullen’s Orphans has certainly found a new home. It’s not a cosy, overly sentimental home with cosy log fires and Ovaltine at bedtime but it’s exactly the right place Scottish audiences should be visiting at this time.
Orphans runs at the SECC Armadillo until tonight and is touring to the King’s Theatre, Edinburgh and Eden Court, Inverness.
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