Edinburgh Fringe 2025
The Big Day
Pure Class Theatre and New Celts Productions
Genre: Comedy, New Writing, Theatre
Venue: theSpace On The Mile
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Four lifelong pals from said Bellshills have planned a long awaited get-together at The Big Day, a free music festival that was the centre piece of Glasgow’s 1990 European City of Culture celebrations. But they now find themselves unable to see it. They’ve ended up in a police holding cell. One of them chose to ping a glow stick at the lassie from their own neck of the woods who’s performing on stage as the headline act.
Review
It’s 1990, midway through Glasgow’s year in the sun as European City of Culture and its The Big Day, a free music festival that was, arguably, the centre point in the city’s celebrations. It attracted around 300,000 punters and featured performances all over the city, showcasing Scottish and international acts that included the likes of Deacon Blue, Wet Wet Wet and Bellshills very own Sheena Easton.
But the four lifelong pals from said Bellshills who’d planned a long awaited get-together at this mega-party now find themselves unable to see it. They’ve ended up in a police (or polis, as we call them up here) holding cell. One of them chose to ping a glow stick at the lassie from their own neck of the woods who’s on stage .
Sheena’s “crime”? Acquiring a faux American accent now that she’s hit the big time, dumping the Weegie patois for something more sophisticated, with a bigger global reach. But remember, you can take the lass oot of Glesga, but ye cannae take Glesga oot the lass. And there’s another girl languishing in the corner of the cell but she’s nay fae roon here. She’s from foreign parts – Mull – incarcerated for having the temerity to bottle a pestering pervert.
Will all this forced proximity break down the barriers that have grown up between the four pals and the latent barrier between them and her from foreign parts? And, more importantly, how the heck can they all get back out to the concert?
Fiona’s glow stick rebellion is hilarious, perfectly ridiculous yet curiously earnest. Easton’s betrayal of her Glaswegian origins stirs worries amongst the quartet that they, too, might be losing their voices. Their being locked together forces them to confront each other and themselves, opening up fracture lines of trust, trepidation, and quiet compassion, fissures that maybe point to something bigger.
What makes The Big Day stand out, though, is its cast. The five Napier University alumni breathe life into characters which could have easily slipped into stereotypes but are each hauntingly recognisable: prosaic, defensive, regretful, hopeful, hurt. They’re all working‑class dreamers, four who left school at 16 because that’s what you do in Bellshill, the other from the same socio-economic cohort but aiming for university as a means to escape.
There’s a natural chemistry between them, allowing the dialogue to flow freely, emotions between them rising and falling like the tide. The badinage is laced with regrets which land like confessions, sometimes tender, often sharp, always textured. Yet running through each of the quintet was a genuine undercurrent of vulnerability, born of the struggle to stay above water, to stay in a job, to keep a roof over their respective heads, to stay solvent.
Andrew Cole’s set is simple but evocative, consisting of speaker towers and fencing that doubles as both the music festival stage barrier and the cell walls restraining the quintet. Sound and lighting provide empathetic support as the action unfolds with effective short, sharp blackouts delineating scene breaks.
Milly Sweeney’s tightly scripted piece has been inventively staged and directed by Lucy Pedersen. It’s a piece of theatre that packs more meaning and messages into forty-five minutes than many pieces twice that length. The original 1990 Big Day gig highlighted a range of issues, focusing on the homeless but touching others in Scotland such as industrial decline, lack of replacement investment, inequality, poverty, male violence against women, and drug abuse in all its forms.
Fast forward the better part of two generations and you might justifiably ask what has actually changed, apart from Scotland now being a devolved nation, that is? Perhaps that’s why The Big Day seems so worryingly apposite. Thoroughly recommended viewing.
