David Grieg's play Yellow Moon engages the audience from beginning to end. Following its run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe last year (see review
), this arresting drama is back at the Traverse as part of the Bank of Scotland's annual Imaginate Childrens Festival.
Subtitled "The Ballad of Leila and Lee" it is a modern day Bonnie and Clyde story of two troubled teenagers from Fife who end up going on the run. Leila is a studious Muslim girl who has given up speaking and self-harms on a Friday night as she reads celebrity magazines. Stag Lee Macalinden, already known to the police, fantasises about being a successful criminal. One evening they bump into one another and go to a cemetery where they encounter Lee's mother's boyfriend Billy whom Lee accidentally kills. Traumatised, they flee to the Highlands in search of Lee's long lost dad.
The pace of Guy Holland's production is frenetic. The dialogue, which is interspersed with narrative, comes fast and furious and coupled with Nigel Dunn's music brilliantly mirrors the emotions of all four characters involved. And there were excellent performances from all the actors.
Andrew Scott-Ramsay skilfully portrayed Lee's edginess; Nalini Chetty deftly depicted the vulnerability of Leila; Beth Marshall, who played the mother and the celebrity the couple meet in the Highlands who also self-harms and Keith Macpherson, who plays the pent-up Frank, a complex, isolated character immersed in guilt for having abandoned his son.
Yellow Moon plays like a dramatisation of a coming-of-age road movie where we witness each character's evolution in their journey of discovery. It pulsates with vibrancy - and violence - and concludes on a note of wary optimism despite the blood that has been spilled.
Show times
Til 2 June, 7.30pm
British tour details at www.tag-theatre.co.uk