The Guardian 21 February 2022

Here is a play that seems custom-built for a mainstage tour. It has popular hit written all over it. A vigorous debut by writer and director Eilidh Loan, it is male-centred working-class comedy in the tradition of Roddy McMillan’s The Bevellers and John Byrne’s The Slab Boys. It is funny yet bittersweet, raucous yet sentimental, angry yet celebratory. If many of its themes feel familiar, it makes for no less of a good night out.

Working in Loan’s favour is the truth of her story. Had this been fiction, she would have had to tone down the litany of tragedies that befall the seven young men who form an amateur football team in 1980s Renfrew, near Paisley. The production is driven by a tremendous life force, not least because of its crisply executed choreography, but the play is stalked by death. [READ MORE]

By Mark Fisher

MARK FISHER is a freelance theatre critic and feature writer based in Edinburgh and has written about theatre in Scotland since the late-1980s. He is a theatre critic for The Guardian, a former editor of The List magazine and a frequent contributor to the Scotsman and other publications. He is the co-editor of the play anthology Made in Scotland (1995), and the author of The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide (2012) and How to Write About Theatre (2015) – all Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. He is also the editor of The XTC Bumper Book of Fun for Boys and Girls and What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Discovery Book (both Mark Fisher Ltd).