IN the main this is the same production that 7:84 did at the King's during Mayfest. One obvious change: Frank Gallagher takes over from Gerard Kelly as Scullery, replacing his element of ''on the qui vive'' swagger with something altogether lower in key -- Gallacher's Scullery has a quieter slippery-sly note to him, very much the acute, observing shadow within Road's close, shared reaches of poverty. It's a nicely judged performance in a production that has continued to draw together throughout its touring run, though the format of the writing will always favour individual cameo, rather than ensemble, playing.
The play -- well perhaps it's because, in the run of work, I see so many first plays that are howls of anger against social injustice that I find it hard to be, after several seeings, gung-ho enthusiastic about Jim Cartwright's script. Actually no. That's a misplaced effort to be kind to the writer . . . Road has accrued several awards of the BestNew, BestDrama variety. It is, at core, a plotless, episodic/anecdotal amalgam that perversely teeters on the brink of making poverty romantic.
The anger is spiked by sentimentality and an over-written poesy that would sound posey were it not for the gritty determination of the 7:84 cast to give it the Glesca resonance of glottal-stopped hardship. On one level this play appears powerful, abrasive, an indictment of a system that rejects people, pushes them into a squalor of casual sex and doled-out drunkenness but in truth -- and despite the fierce, fine playing of Douglas Henshall and Alexander Morton in particular -- Road just lets us all off the hook. Like the TV news pictures of violence in wars or riots, it makes entertainment out of reality.
I feel quite desolate writing that -- worse, even believing it. But I'd rather 7:84 did more of the box-office-unpopular programmes of new writing (eg Long Story Short) than follow a Road that makes commercial popularity out of poverty.
MARY BRENNAN
The Herald14 Jun 1989