A few blocks down the road on Argyle Street, a stall is promoting conspiracy theories about AstraZeneca. Every side is pasted with neurotic headlines misinforming passersby about vaccines. It is an odd, not to mention dangerous, throwback to the pandemic.
So, too, in its own benign way, is Douglas Maxwell’s play. It is not just that Man’s Best Friend concerns a lockdown-era bereavement, a hospital stay in isolation and a funeral on Zoom. It is also that its themes are steeped in those strange months when it felt we had been plucked out of time. Maxwell evokes the days when past and future were denied us.
There is clapping for the NHS, a new moment of neighbourliness and an urge to yell out the names of those we have lost. More than that, there is a sense of rootlessness and irresolution. A world in limbo.[READ MORE]