Brazil

100487 original

Ronan O’Donnell can turn a phrase, that’s for sure. The Scottish writer of this very Scottish monologue, which premiered in London back in 2003, offers us some rich constructions, like when narrator Doddy (Angus Chisholm) talks about his brother "pulling his duff tae dirty books" and describes another character’s eyes as "like two holes pished in snow". 

The story starts with Doddy in a supermarket attempting to steal Marmite. Chisholm plays him as a whacked-out waster, almost a vagrant (think Dee Dee from Limmy’s Show) getting through his day in the face of "knobsters" like the supermarket manager. Chisholm’s tone is too monotonous and the direction, by Alex Crampton, too static to give it the next-level kick it needs. But there’s no denying the distinctiveness of O’Donnell’s writing. 

He builds a bleak, strange world—possibly set in some mid-apocalyptic future, or else hallucinated in the Marmite-addled mind of our narrator—with startlingly vivid images and a roster of bizarre characters. Doddy embarks on drawn out, completely engrossing descriptions of simple scenes like watching the TV or going to the pub, each act beset with problems like the fact that America has invaded and is dropping bombs on this unspecified Scottish town. 

It’s difficult to pin this play down – too easy to get lost in the morass of often bewildering, sometimes brilliant language, too easy to lose sight of what this play actually is. It feeds off its own fecund language like some alien creature. As a play it’s thick with O’Donnell’s inimitable style. As a piece of theatre, it needs something more.