FringeReview Scotland 2026
BYT Radio Play
Borders Youth Theatre
Genre: New Writing, Radio Play, Youth Theatre
Venue: Duns Cadet Hall
Festival: FringeReview Scotland
Low Down
What would you do when the world you know collapses around you? Who can you trust and will anyone hear your plaintive cries for help? And what happens when the Aliens start their interrogation?
Radio Waves is a surreal, absurdist exploration of life, love, survival and what it means to be without the person you love the most. And it’s also a bit silly too!
Review
Borders Youth Theatre delivers a wide-ranging workshop and performance project programme across the Scottish Borders throughout the year. Its inclusive ethos encourages young people sometimes overlooked by mainstream arts groups to acquire life-skills and skills for life, growing emotionally, raising ambitions, and helping teach them the benefits of working effectively as a team – all through fun and creativity.
And no more is this evident than in the radio play conceived and written by the BYT Radio Play group, delivered as part of the DunsPlayFest week.
Now, what would you do when the world you know collapses around you? I mean, who can you trust when everything seems lost? Will anyone even hear your plaintive cries for help? And what happens when the Aliens start their interrogation? Radio Waves is a surreal, absurdist exploration of life, love, survival and what it means to be without the person you love the most. And it’s also a bit silly too!
The spokesperson for the State Department For Preservation (SDFP) seems determined to tell its citizens that, despite the obvious chaos brewing around them, all is, in fact, well and there is no cause for alarm. The local radio DJ, however, is self-centred to the point of narcissism, and clearly comes from another planet. Meanwhile, the citizens, some of whom appear to be anthropomorphic, are trying to keep their lives on an even keel, regardless of the apparently impending implosion of life as they have come to know it.
If this all sounds a little crazy, that’s because it is. And it’s supposed to be, these perceptive young writers having cottoned on to the fact that the adults around them, and their forebears, haven’t made a particularly good job of running things on planet Earth thus far.
This joyously multi-layered storyboard, laced with allegories, analogies, metaphors, similes and plenty of the just plain bonkers, also includes a range of ridiculous radio commercials ranging from free Government first aid kits, through to discounted stuffed cats (who’ve died due to some mysterious disease introduced by rats) as a means of frightening off the growing rodent population. First in English, then in French. Work that out. Kafkaesque to a tee.
As the world rapidly goes down the proverbial plughole despite the plaintive “carry on regardless” pleas from the SDFP, so the denouement heaves into view, a macabre game show hosted by our wonderful DJ, which comes with an equally macabre outcome, leaving just a lost soul radioing into the ether in the eternal hope that someone out there might come to their aid.
Clever script, nicely delivered and all worryingly redolent of the challenges facing young people everywhere in the 21st century.
