What can be a better way to spend a couple of daytime hours than a good old fashioned mutton pie (only one of the choices!), a pint of IPA (also only one of the choices) and a short play? Not much, say I.
Between Tuesday 21 September and Saturday 23 October, the Traverse Theatre is hosting its third season of the fantastic lunchtime theatre event, A Play, A Pie and A Pint, jointly presented by Òran Mór and Paines Plough.
For five weeks, five brand new plays by some of the UK and Ireland’s top writers will be performed at the Traverse following World premieres at Glasgow’s Òran Mór. Following the season at the Traverse, these five co-productions will tour to the Live Theatre in Newcastle, the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry and Bewley’s Café Theatre in Dublin, taking A Play, A Pie and A Pint to more people than ever before.
This season features some of the most high profile writers to date including April De Angelis (Amongst Friends, Catch); David Harrower (Lucky Box, 365, Blackbird, Kill the Old, Torture Their Young); Marie Jones (Stones in His Pockets, A Night in November); Linda McLean (Riddance, strangers, babies) and Gary Owen (The Shadow of a Boy, The Drowned World).
This week’s play, In the Pipeline by Gary Owen, takes the form of three monologues by characters who are about to be affected by the construction and inevitable impact of a large gas pipeline. The first character, Andrew ably played by Rhodri Lewis who delivered his wordy piece without a hitch, is a harmless but unsympathetic and basically lonely railway worker. Dai (Grahame Foxe) played an older man facing redundancy from a power station and whose experiences going through this went in to the realms of the incredible although some strong political points were made.
Meg Wynn Owen played the final character, Joan. She was seated and apparently reading her lines, though this did not detract from her performance, that told of a rather fey experience through pleasant prose with the disappointing cliché “...and then I wake up”. While the three were affected in different ways by the imminent change, each monologue was quite disconnected from the other and this reviewer was waiting for some other link between them beyond the pipeline and the very disparate human experiences.
Tickets are £12 and include a play, a pie and a pint of Caledonian IPA or McEwan’s 70 Shilling, 175ml glass of wine, regular glass of Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Lemonade or Orange Juice).
Next week’s play will be The Uncertainty Files by Linda McLean
Tues 5 – Sat 9 October, 1pm