You Deserve It
★★★★☆ Deserves praise
theSpace on The Mile (Venue 39): Sat 3 – Fri 23 Aug 2024
Review by Hugh Simpson
Out of Order Productions and New Celts do justice to Jess Ferrier’s impressive new play You Deserve It at theSpace on the Mile.
A group of successful creative types (who, entirely coincidentally of course, have parents who were in the same industry) are gathered at a swish central Edinburgh Airbnb. However, it appears that someone knows their darkest secrets and is wanting to exact revenge.
You Deserve It. Pic: Iain Davie
The play is – like Ferrier’s previous work – clever and wonderfully structured. The characters, who could easily be treated as ciphers, have real dimension to them. Their backgrounds, relationships, hopes and fears are sketched in with real skill and at exactly the right rate.
The mysterious elements of the plot, meanwhile, proceed beautifully, with just the right amount of twists, which are never too outlandish and never derail the plot. That is, unfortunately, up until the moment where exactly who is responsible for everything is discovered, which strains credulity to breaking point.
sympathetic direction
However, this hardly matters, as the thriller element of the play is certainly subsidiary to the interplay of the characters, who are finely drawn and excellently played. It is testament to the writing, the acting and to David Wotton’s sympathetic direction that such outwardly terrible people can also be sympathetic.
Harris is an overly-entitled actor who is constantly quoting Hamlet, because it’s his greatest triumph. Apart from ‘Teatime with the Tinkle Tots’, and anyway, he didn’t exactly get the part of the Dane on his own merits. Sean Tennant nails the affable, obliviously self-loving nature of the character frighteningly well.
You Deserve It. Pic: Iain Davie
Yasmin Taylor plays his cousin Skye, a former child actor who has fallen out of love with showbiz, with a brittle quality that is very convincing. Jenny MacDougall gives actor Aurora a similar vulnerability, while Leah Neill plays model Lilith with a bubbling, barely-suppressed anger.
Robbie Small’s actor Blair has a cheery affability, while Archie Beattie has a charmingly sneering quality. His character Lennox is a former Love Island contestant with a penchant for Twitter outbursts, and the characterisation certainly has definite similarities to at least one former minor celebrity with an inflammatory online presence.
Ferrier avoids easy judgements and stereotypical characterisations, and all of them have more going on than is first apparent. The end result is taut, convincing, well directed, very well acted and highly recommended.
Running time: One hour and 5 minutes (no interval)
theSpace on the Mile (Space 3), 80 High St, EH1 1TH (Venue 39)
Saturday 3 – Friday 23 August 2024
Odd dates only: 4.35pm
Details and tickets at: Book here
Facebook: @outoforderproduction
Instagram: @out.of.order.productions
X: @OutOfOrderPro
