I first met Robin Cairns a few years ago at a Foakies night at the Royal Oak when he fair exploded on to the stage, and have since been fortunate enough to have shared the odd bill with him on the poetry reading circuit. He is a regular performer at Britain’s oldest music hall in Glasgow, the Britannia Panopticon and this is his very first full show, Morningside Malcolm meets the Weegies!
In the intimate and well-named venue, the Banshee Labyrinth, the packed house got a warm and personal welcome from Mr Cairns who soon had everyone chanting, fitbaa style, for Malcolm McDullion ‘the toughest guy in the Canny Man’. Malcolm is a conceptual artist with an exhibition of his latest piece, The Bath of Shoes.
On the opening night, the seriously dodgy ‘ice cream man’ Big Urquie, that Malcolm knew from school, turns up with his wife and the two worlds collide. Malcolm, in spite of living off Glasgow’s hard past, thinks ‘Loopy Lorna’s is the centre of the universe’ and Big Urquie who ‘breaks fingers in better places’ than his chum’s bijou gallery are ready for a showdown.
This energetic one-man piece of inventive and very funny writing is also a tremendous feat of memory where Cairns changes characters (Malcolm, Big Urquie and their respective wives et al) convincingly without the aid of costume. This is a comic and highly engaging tale, esoteric with familiar Edinburgh landmarks but still with that Glasgow habit of putting the definite article before big road names!
Robin Cairns is a generous and original performer with fall-off -the -couch comic poems like his epic political fantasy Bobby and the Bourgeoisie and the hilarious yet moving Old Lochgelly. Miss him at your peril!
Robin’s book and DVD, The Last Man With Sky is published by Red Squirrel press
Show times
26 to 28 August, 2.50pm
Admission free, non-ticketed