The Stage

Nova Scotia

Published Thursday 1 May 2008 at 17:10 by Thom Dibdin

John Byrne ensures that the cast in Paddy Cunneen’s pacey and energetic production for the Traverse can hit the stage running in the fourth part of the Slab Boys’ “trilogy”.

Sharp dialogue and mistaken identity splatter across the stage as it catches up with one-time Paisley slab boys Phil McCann - now a reclusive painter living in northeast Scotland with his Turner-prize nominated video artist wife Didi - and “Spanky” Farrell - now a has-been pharmaceutically-challenged rock star.

Excellent performances all round ensure that Byrne’s script is fully realised. Paul Morrow’s McCann is sneeringly snide against Gerry Mulgrew’s brilliantly created forgetfulness as Spanky. Meg Fraser is full of vitality as Didi, with a big dollop of carnal lust aimed at her latest flame, cameraman Corky Doyle - an obliviously youthful Nicholas Karimi.

Cara Kelly is utterly believable as the voice of the Scottish cultured classes, arts corespondent Nancy Rice. Gerda Stevenson provides a particularly sharp performance as Lucille - ex-wife of both McCann and Spanky, but now married to Spanky. Robin Laing is solid but little used as Lucille and McCann’s son, Miles.

While the company are pinprick precise on the comedy and pace, picking up but not dwelling on Byrne’s autobiographical details of his own domestic situation in Acts I and II, Act III’s change of pace feels forced, as Byrne provides overlong soliloquies for McCann and Didi on the state of modern art.

Michael Taylor’s set is both realised in meticulous detail, down to the last Pink Campion, and a reflection of the play’s themes, with kids’ toys strewn around, suffocating ivy clinging to an old Scottish castle with McCann’s studio a carbuncle round the back.