May Day traditionally heralds the arrival of spring, new buds, hope and fertility. In more recent years it is the bank holiday associated with international worker day – a celebration of solidarity, the power of the people and the value of working for the common good.
Hannah Lavery and Cora Bissett did a marvelous job in creating a themed variety show of great Scottish and international talent for this rapid response to our times. Important issues were unwrapped like a selection box of bite-size entertainment which touched the funny bone, elicited tears and were always thought-provoking.
Just for one night, this show drew a rapturous crowd. Live theatre is like nothing else – it is a moment in time; a flame flickering and then extinguished; a shared experience which brings hearts, minds and souls together in joy, pain and understanding. It is storytelling to share our humanity. This night hit the spot again and again.
With a fast-paced turnaround of performers, simple utterances like, “Wow,” defined the song taken from Lament for Sheku Bayoh. Delight met the power and rawness of the clean vested, high-waisted modern-day punk singing Fascist Bob. Warmth and affection met Tia Boyd whose natural humour about their gender fluidity could not fail to make you smile. Sanjeev Kohli made the audience laugh out loud talking about his role as Navid Harrid in Still Game and what being a stereotype signifies. He found a sense of genuine belonging in the national embrace of his character. There was a talented and warm-hearted LGBT choir, a film showing how individuals can take action to support victims of genocide in Palestine with the GINA project – showing that we can all do something practical, despite any sense of helplessness we may feel in a world of billionaires, fake news, land-grabbing wars and corrupt politicians.
I loved the conversation between Pandora and Hope – no simple answers here – while Charlene Boyd, Adam Buksh and Tyler Collins were highly entertaining in Only You. The interpretive dance was dynamic. The images projected during songs, powerful. The simplicity of sharing thoughts and feelings in a variety of forms: life affirming. The song shared by the entire large cast at the interval was defiant and powerfully moving.
I could go on. Suffice it to say that the joint facilitators, Hannah Lavery and Cora Bissett hit the mark. Lavery wrote that many of us are tired of having to justify our humanity again and again. The task for the co-directors was to speak honestly about harm without reproducing it. She wrote: The cultural shift we are living through is not only political. It is linguistic. Harmful ideas rarely arrive shouting. They often come wrapped in the language of pragmatism, order, and reassurance.
This one shared night of concerns and hopes wrapped in a breadth of expressive arts was what really good theatre is all about. Bravo!
Reviewer: Kathleen Mansfield
Reviewed: 1st May 2026
North West End UK Rating:
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