A Slice of Saturday Night is a fun nostalgia trip into “what it was like growing up in the Sixties” brought enthusiastically to the stage by a company who obviously didn’t and didn’t let it matter for a moment.
It didn’t matter either that the show was obviously let down by an absence of radio mikes, that the band drowned out some of the lyrics or there were pillars in front of actors you couldn’t see and couldn’t hear. It was performed with such refreshing vitality and energy it became an utter joy. It was the kind of show that is getting rarer to find in Edinburgh: a good, old fashioned, young fringe company busting a gut to show off what they do well despite the odds.
To be honest the writing isn’t the greatest, but it, like the company, wears its inexperience as a self-depreciating badge of virtue and does what it can do well. It has some nice gags and keeps everything ticking along to a beat. The story is a reassuring naff tale of a mild mannered geek getting a girl while the local Jack The Lad fluffs it.
The Sixties songs have the same mixture of success but they are sold well by a disciplined young cast. It is naïve and soft focused stuff but that’s what nostalgia is supposed to be about. However it is the company of performers that make this show worth seeing, it seems wrong to single out when all worked so hard, but Sarah Row and John Rogerson are the pick of a hard working bunch.
I’ve got a feeling if this company remembers to pack a better script and a few radio mikes next year they will have us queuing down The Royal Mile for tickets, but until then A Slice of Saturday Night is a fab night out.