Last year’s innovative lunchtime theatre series "A Play, A Pie and A Pint", a successful collaboration between Glasgow’s Òran Mór and the Traverse Theatre, is back in Edinburgh for the next 5 weeks. This time they have had the good sense to include the classic meat pie (Òran Mór’s own, I am told) among the choice and very good it is too. Aussies take note!
The opening play, Heaven, by award winning writer, Simon Stephens, takes place in what, because of the local references in the play, we deduce to be Edinburgh airport and shows the strange interaction between two men, Kyle and Sean.
Kyle is the older of the two. He conducts a persistent diatribe on Sean on the subject of litter and the environment that turns to a dialogue on the benefits of eating raw vegetables without much warning.
This sets the pattern for the way the play moves. We are witness to this apparent busybody being a catalyst to the younger man‘s confessions of his innermost fears, “…the size of the night/ the sound of the sea…”and his wife and child’s ‘unnerving’ eyes, but we are never privy to whether any dark deeds were actually done.
Is Kyle an embodiment of Sean’s conscience or an angel sent from heaven to a place where mortals try to fly?
Who knows?
There is a lovely surprise at the end when, under a glittering mirrorball, Kyle sings a song about a bar called Heaven where ‘nothing ever happens’. He is accompanied in harmony by a glamorous air hostess, but you’ll have to go to the play to find out who she is!
Suspend your disbelief and enjoy this wee nugget of theatre.
The ticket price of £10 includes a pie and a pint or glass of wine or soft drink. Show runs from Tuesday 02 to Saturday 06 March and starts at 1pm. The season continues until 03 April with a new play each week.