Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Yellow
Cross-Gartered Players
Genre: Comedy, Political, Theatre
Venue: TheSpace
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Admirably ambitious, Yellow is at its best when telling the story of how a friendship kindles between two disaffected lawyers and inspires each to make necessary changes in their lives. The evolving relationship between the two central characters makes this a watchable tale.
Review
In the Cross-Gartered Players’ Yellow, written by Geoffrey Mamdani, one lawyer wrestles with her conscience at helping a firm that has been targeting the elderly with dubious schemes. Another wrestles with his past. Rosie (Heli Pärna) is uncomfortable with her role in what her boss Tony (a wonderful and under-used Peter Wilding) calls “financial weapons of mass destruction,” with the way that nature has been overwritten by commercial culture, and with her doubts over the possibility of change. Over the course of her developing friendship with her prickly and aloof colleague Mal (Yorgos Filippakis), she begins to see a new way forward, while he takes steps to lay to rest a troubling incident that cratered his career.
The script handles the evolution in the central relationship between Rosie and Mal nicely, at a believable pace. This success underscores, however, that this is essentially a two-person play, which somehow has a cast of six. Wilding’s Tony adds levity but is too briefly on stage; two other employees in the law firm offer little more than scene-setting, and one character appears so briefly and surreally, it is almost as if she wandered in from another production. Structurally, her role seems to be intended as an inflection point, and yet it is not directly linked to what comes before or after it, nor do the characters make any further reference to her recriminations.
Many of the characters’ actions and decisions are not motivated by the story or what the audience learns about their personalities. The play bills itself as “Twelfth Night meets The Thick of It,” and Mal, much like his namesake Malvolio, is the victim of a poison pen letter. The difference is that in Twelfth Night, the audience knows who set him up and why they did it. In Yellow, the questions aren’t answered, or, really – despite their central importance — even raised.
The script contains numerous incidental Shakespearean references, but their purpose is unclear, as they lack connection to their literary antecedents. Its relationship with The Thick of It is more obvious. It doesn’t quite attain the sharp humour and intricate machinations of that show, but Wilding’s Tony would certainly be at home there, and the set readily calls to mind the lair of frustrated pencil-pushers (deftly augmented with touches of yellow).
Though the acting for the central pair is credible, a degree of staginess hinders most performances and much of the dialogue. The show doesn’t drag, in part because it isn’t easy to predict where it’s going. This does keep things interesting, and makes it a watchable tale. By the end, however, one is left with the feeling that it hasn’t covered much territory, either in the realm of ideas discussed or in the arcs of its characters – a little bit, perhaps, less Twelfth Night, and a bit more Much Ado About Nothing.
