Mayflies theatre review: Ghostly, time-bending reflections
Andrew O’Hagan’s coming-of-age novel is adapted with intricate care and a hard-hitting, weighty script
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A Grid Iron adaptation of an Andrew O’Hagan novel is destined to come freighted with expectations. Ben Harrison’s warehouse production leans into its classy trappings, with 360-degree seating and colossal digital projections. Harrison keeps the novel’s first-person narration, delivered by Jimmy (Matthew Pidgeon) who weaves like a ghost in and around his past, observing his younger self (Kieran Devine) and best friend Tully (Jude Bain as a younger man, Graham Mackay-Bruce in middle age) as they dive headfirst into adulthood.
O’Hagan says in the programme notes that he always thought Mayflies would lend itself to theatre. However, the play’s first half seems to have more kinship with cinema. There is a voiceover-like quality to the narration, as the younger actors lope slo-mo around the stage in hedonistic montages, intercepted by snatches of 80s hits. The star of the show here is the language and its wisdom. You almost want to pause the action to linger over lines like, ‘there are things you know at 18 that you will never know again’.
Then the guillotine of the present slams into Jimmy’s memories and, from here, the drama begins to tighten its knots. Now we have conflict, as Anna (an outstanding Lucianne McEvoy), Tully’s fiancée (then wife) becomes a lone voice of opposition to a seismic decision he makes.
Theatrical novel adaptations are a strange beast. But it’s a pleasure to see a vast, life-spanning story with a huge, beating heart unfold in flesh and blood before you.
Mayflies, Rear Warehouse Browns Of Leith, until 30 August, 4pm; picture: Mihaela Bodlovic.