Love, Lies and Taxidermy

Paines Plough’s Roundabout at Summerhall has become a go-to destination for great new writing, and this three-hander from Alan Harris is no exception. It’s a funny, heartwarming and tender tale of underdogs fighting the odds.

In sleepy Merthyr Tydfil, a boy meets a girl outside a medical trials lab. But the course of young love runs far from smooth, and their fathers aren’t helping. His is a Polish builder obsessed with taxidermy and his estranged wife, hers a failing ice cream seller threatened with debtors' prison. With an amateur pornographer circling with a tempting offer of cash, can love win out in the end?

Charmingly performed by Remy Beasley, Richard Corgan and Andy Rush, the story rattles along. We’re taken on a whistle-stop tour of the town where “all roads lead to Tesco”. Characters and scenes change in a moment, aided by nimble lighting and sound.

The play takes time to find its feet, but once you feel at home in its world it’s completely absorbing. It finds colour in a grey landscape, joy in a post-industrial town whose community is hurting. As such its climax is a glorious celebration of humanity in the bleakest circumstances. It shows that compassion can still conquer commercial interest.

At a time when many are writing off towns such as Merthyr as being backwards and out-of-step, this is a timely reminder of its struggles and complexities; and the fact that there is little to match the dignity of good people in hard times.