The sound is deafening as an Edinburgh-bound train rolls loudly across the Forth Rail Bridge.
Al Smith’s contemporary adaptation of Gogol’s ‘Diary of a Madman’ takes as its sub-text a globalising, rapidly changing world, from which ‘Pop’ Sheeran (Liam Brennan) becomes increasingly alienated.
His teenage daughter is quickly growing up, the skills he once took pride in being replaced by new paint technology that threaten his job. Even local folk traditions on loner offer security.
This is courageous theatre, taking and re-shaping a Russian classic into a tale for these times, with both local and global implications.
When Matthew (Guy Clark) appears as Pop’s unlikely apprentice, troubles double. Pop’s daughter Sophie (Louise McMenemy) knows Matthew from an encounter in Edinburgh, and although Matthew is shocked to discover Sophie is seventeen, nature slowly takes her course while Pop struggles not to harbour resentments after having invited Matthew, sent to study the effects of a new paint on the bridge, to stay with Pop’s family.
Gradually, however, the pressure on Pop begins to tell. Anxieties about both his daughter and the security of his job being to show in increasingly bizarre behaviours, that culminates in outbursts at the Queensferry Fair.
There is fine ensemble playing throughout, and although much of the play’s focus is on Brennan’s character, Both McMenemy and Clark turn in altogether excellent performances as the young lovers, ably supported by Deborah Arnott as Pop’s long-suffering wife and Lois Chimimba as Sophie’s gallus girl friend.
Perhaps unusual to mention sound effects as the most prominent aspect of a production, but the frequent sound of moving rolling stock ensures we are aware when we’re in Pop’s paint shed deep inside the bridge. We know how much this is part of Pop and his family’s life, as much as the Queensferry Burry Man and the other aspects of history this play revels in.
‘Diary of a Madman’ exhibits great ambition in the topics it tackles and the way in which its characters approach them. Gogol it may not be, but it’s none the worse for that.
On a personal note, thanks to Al Smith for consicing into a couple of sentences the Scottish contribution to what is commonly known as the ‘English Civil War’, a task that took this reviewer some twenty five thousand words to achieve…
Times: 4-28 August (not 8, 15, 22 - times vary, see Fringe programme for details), £18.50, £13.50, £8.50