Trapping three nightmare neighbours in the dodgy lift of their Glasgow high-rise, Ready tae Drap has lots of sparky, slapstick humour – but not so much nuance. The play, now showing at Òran Mór until 5 September, relies on comedy chemistry to ask whether contrasting characters can find common ground.
A clash of characters in a cramped lift
Crotchety conspiracy theorist Pat (Isabelle Joss) is in her 70s and armed with barbed, uninvited observations. Saintly, exhausted Muslim mum of two Aaliyah (Tinashe Warikandwa) is on the verge of giving birth to her third child. Dry-humoured Lauren (performed by playwright Éimi Quinn) is the play’s millennial, fourth-wall-breaking narrator, clad in fishnets and bunny ears for a hen-do.
It’s a classic setup: can these contrasting characters find common ground in a tight spot? Not really, according to the review. Quinn’s vivid new play digs into chalk-and-cheese humour and an ever-present threat of body fluids, cracking jokes as blue as Lauren’s favourite flavour of WKD.
Dynamic direction and comedic chemistry
Within the lift’s cramped confines (with concise design from Heather Grace Currie), Maureen Carr’s direction is dynamic and physical, bringing out the cast’s comedic chemistry. Pat’s gleeful descriptions of her post-menopausal sex life leave Aaliyah and Lauren wide-eyed and the Òran Mór’s full house roaring.
But all this (literal, enjoyable) pissing about disguises the crux of the matter. For most of the hour, the older woman’s racism is watered down – although one sharply written line about Glasgow’s city centre fires has the audience nodding in agreement before it slides into blatant xenophobia.
Thin characterisation beneath the humour
When Pat eventually tears off a vicious tirade against migrants, directed at Aaliyah whom she “doesn’t mean to offend”, both characters feel caricatured and underwritten. Even then, Pat’s lonely backstory is richer than Aaliyah’s, who is given a detail-free story about moving to Glasgow as a refugee – and all the while, Lauren, the audience’s direct contact, has fallen asleep in the corner.
When she wakes, her own emotional reckoning is just as thin: Aaliyah and Pat team up to demand why “selfish” Lauren doesn’t want kids, and she skims over a vague answer in less time than the trio spent poking fun at hen-do inflatables.
Ready tae Drap wisely doesn’t pretend that small talk will fix society’s deepening trenches. But despite its sleeves-rolled-up approach to life’s grubbier stuff, it shrinks away from emotional viscera. At Òran Mór, Glasgow, until 5 September.
