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]