Edinburgh Fringe 2024

Tartan Tat

Shark Bait Theatre

Genre: Comedy, New Writing, Theatre

Venue: theSpace @ Niddry Street

Festival: Edinburgh Fringe

Low Down

Review

These days it seems like there’s a plethora of Edinburgh shops that specialise in parting customers from their cash in return for, well, tat.  Utterly and completely useless tat in fact, manufactured in a far off land, probably using slave labour, then shipped thousands of miles to gather dust on a shelf somewhere on the Royal Mile.  Don’t believe me?  Just step outside the Fringe bubble, hit the High Street and enter the first retail emporium you find.  You’ll see what I mean.

So, welcome to Tartan Tat, where it’s a morning just like all other mornings in this hotbed of consumerism – staff gone AWOL, manager tearing her hair out, stock room a mess and everyone generally disenchanted with life in a city where a coffee will gulp down an hour of your wages.

Enter Harris, the latest in the line of students looking to scrape a few quid together to help survive the jungle of higher education on a shoestring.  Cue Kayley, the latest off the revolving carousel of managers to be in charge of the place, to explain how everything works.  Or doesn’t.  And for the rest of the staff, the discontent that is Orla, the ebullient Millicent and the taciturn Arran, to meet the newbie.

Life at Tartan Tat is pretty easy going as it’s rarely busy, probably due to the merchandise they have to offer, set out here before the packed audience down at theSpace @ Niddry Street venue on a well-designed set with shop counter and shelves crammed with genuine five star tat that’s obviously taken a lot of seeking out.  There’s just one golden rule though – never let Arran anywhere within about a mile of a real customer.

But when Harris just has to have a bathroom break, that golden rule is completely torpedoed.  Inside two minutes, an exchange between Arran and a young child looking to buy a Harry Potter book has gone viral in the way that these things can do when they hit social media.  The race is then on to put the genie back in the bottle.  Only no-one can find the cork.

This refreshing piece of new theatre from writers Lex Joyce and Isla Campbell uses rapid, punchy dialogue  and piercingly sharp (and dark) humour to shine the spotlight on a number of issues facing young and old alike in today’s Edinburgh – employment that has no means to its end; wages guaranteed to drive people into poverty, unless they can hold down three jobs simultaneously; and an inadequate standard and supply of affordable housing.

Sarah Marie Mooney’s direction is spot on, with the five strong cast using every part of the thrust stage to good effect, the frequent scene changes quick and efficient, ensuring there’s complete continuity in what is a genuinely funny piece that gets its more serious points across without ever deploying the sledgehammer.

The acting is universally strong, characters well formed and convincingly delivered.  Jess Ferrier (Kayley, the stressed out shop manager) conveys just the right level of authority but with the soupcon of angst that invariably comes with responsibility. Jed Bury (Harris, the newbie) appears appropriately naive, yet with a determination to do the right thing;  and Lex Joyce (Arran and co-writer) is superbly grumpy, his torrent of patois laden verbiage redolent of someone who knows his life opportunities are limited.

But there were a couple of real stand out performances.  Assistant Millie is desperate to for a bigger role in the shop, in life even, and grabs the opportunity afforded by Arran’s mis-speaking, appointing herself as his agent, with amusing consequences, a role beautifully delivered by Freya Anderson, her stage presence, ebullience, vocal power and enunciation a joy to behold.

And Robyn Reilly’s performance as Orla, a student struggling to make ends meet, was touching, empathetic and amusing – sometimes simultaneously.  OK, she had some great lines to work with but her superb Glasgow intonation, mannerisms and delivery mark her out as an actress with real potential.  Acting is often about timing and Reilly’s is superb, extracting every nuance in the script.  A performance redolent of Miss Toner in John Byrne’s Tutti Frutti from the 1980s, for those of you old enough to remember that classic.

The sharp script, strong acting, characters with whom one can identify, tight direction and courage to take on key issues facing the next generation of contributors to Scotland’s future mark this out as a high grade piece of theatre that will appeal to equally locals and those from further afield.  Thoroughly recommended.

Published August 21, 2024 by Tim Wilcock