As Part 2 of 4Play at The Traverse Theatre’s support of new writing, four brand new plays by four Edinburgh Playwrights are given their first airings over two nights. Tonight it is the turn of plays 3 and 4 in the roster to have their premier outings to an almost full Traverse 2.
Butterflies & Benefits follows the lives of four twenty-something friends, starting at Hogmanay in 1998, the year before the dreaded Y2K, and is set to a soundtrack of dance tunes from that time. Whilst I like a ‘banger’ as much as the next guy, it is fair to say that there is an over reliance on music to both set the scenes and to fill dead air. Character development is left behind in favour of pounding music, dancing madly around, drinking and taking drugs, Coke seemingly the flavour of choice. Maybe that was the reality of the time, but it does not make great theatre.
When Mick and Maz (Michael Francis and Amy Glass) fall into bed together after a drug-induced session it’s not long before Maz is pregnant and the party life is in the rear-view mirror. Unfortunately, Mick’s drug addiction is only getting started and Maz is left holding the baby, alone.
Touching on issues of post-natal depression, drug addiction and abandonment, and featuring a young mother falling into the depths of despair to the plaintive cries of a young baby, is again not great theatre. I’m not really sure what writer and Director Andrea McKenzie is trying to achieve here, other than as an allegory of what not to do with your life.
Having said that, there are decent central performances by both Glass and Francis, the latter scumbag being almost booed by a reactive audience at times. A few laughs in the right places could have made a big difference to create some light and dark in what is sadly a pretty monotone retelling of an all-to-familiar tale.
After a brief interval, next up is Cheapo, a two-handed featuring young actors Dayton Mungai and Heidi Steel as Jamie and Kyla. This takes a bit of time to get going, but certainly gets there in the end improving as it does so.
We join the two school kids as they accidentally meet in a fast-food restaurant and start a game of chess together. Both have problems they are trying to reconcile and the chess board becomes an metaphor for the complex moves they both need to make to survive.
As the play progresses it becomes known that Kyra has recently been the victim of a serious sexual assault and that Jamie was the one who witnessed it and reported it to the police. Kyra has a reputation to keep up and wants to move on and Jamie just wants to keep out of the limelight in the sure knowledge that the colour of his skin has already put a big target on his back.
There is plenty to enjoy in both the nuanced script from Katy Nixon and the performances from both actors. This really gets going when both actors jump bodies to see the situation from the other side and when they fantasise about their future perfect lives, which creates some very nice acting opportunities and brings a bit of vim and vigour to proceedings.
Reviewer: Greg Holstead
Reviewed: 5th December 2024
North West End UK Rating:
Butterflies & Benefits:
Cheapo:
Running time – 2Hrs 10mins (with interval)