And They Played Shang-a-Lang
★★★★★ Joyful romp
Hill Street Theatre (Venue 41): Fri 2 – Sun 25 Aug 2024
Review by Rebecca Mahar
After an eleven-year streak, Edinburgh Little Theatre’s And They Played Shang-a-Lang opens what is billed as its final Fringe run, to a packed and cheering house at the Hill Street Theatre.
Less a jukebox musical than a play scored by nostalgic 1970s interludes, including the Edinburgh institution Bay City Rollers from whose song “Shang-a-Lang” the play takes its title, this production will appeal to its longtime devotees, Edinburgh locals, and newcomers alike.
Connor Reed, Mairi Ridley, Marc Robertson, Jenny Duncan, Bronwen Hutchison, Ryan Donnelly, James Phillips and Suryya Halliday. Pic ELT
Written and directed by Derek Douglas, Shang-a-Lang is framed as an autobiographical journey through the life of fictional theatre maker James “Jim” Douglas via the final play he wrote before his death.
Douglas also plays Jim, who appears in the form of a narrator, leading his audience through a series of vignettes of life growing up in 70s Edinburgh. Simple choreography and hairbrush microphones exemplify the bedroom-dancing style of the production; clearly polished and well-rehearsed, but deliberately rough around the edges, as all spontaneous dance parties are.
The young performers who make up the ensemble of catty schoolgirls trying too hard (Mairi Ridley, Bronwen Hutchison, Suryya Halliday, Jenny Duncan) and randy teenage boys in terrible wigs (James Phillips, Marc Robertson, Connor Reed, Ryan Donnelly) are universally excellent, keeping up their frantic energy throughout the performance and never letting it interfere with the diction of their snappy patter.
nativity
Though they mostly embody the secondary school characters of Jim Douglas’s memory, the ensemble puts in an excellent turn as P1 students rehearsing a nativity play— as does Derek Douglas, who joins this scene as Shepherd 1 in a fuzzy dressing down with a tea towel on his head. Jenny Duncan is also a standout in this scene as the much-harassed teacher Mrs. Green.
James Phillips, Marc Robertson, Connor Reed and Ryan Donnelly. Pic ELT
Another particularly cracking scene from the ensemble is the youth club disco, which brilliantly encapsulates the teenage machinations of being unable to ask someone to dance directly for fear of impropriety, instead navigating a complicated game of telephone through various pals. The Murphy family new year’s party is where all concerned especially shine, however, embodying Jim’s various relations as they gradually fade away with time.
While the greater part of And They Played Shang-a-Lang is to do with youthful joy, it also reckons with mortality; not only of its deceased narrator, but of how death can strike even the young, how we cope with loss, and the inevitability of change.
At one point, Jim Douglas questions: when do you stop growing up? Whatever the answer, you’re never too grown up to enjoy this fast-paced romp through nostalgia and teenage shenanigans.
Running time: One hour (no interval)
Hill Street Theatre (Alba), 19 Hill Street EH2 3JP (Venue 41)
Friday 2 – Sunday 25 August 2024
Daily: 1:35pm
Details and tickets at: Book here
Website: https://edinburghlittletheatre.com
Facebook: @Hill Street Theatre
Instagram: @ hstheatre41
X: @HSTheatre41
ENDS
