The cheeky, contextual reference needs no underscore. “An ode to the lives of Leithers/.”
“O, swear not by the moon, th’ inconstant moon…Lest that thy love prove likewise variable”, laments Juliet, and with wisdom aforethought. This ridiculously young ensemble cast embrace Laila Noble and Emilie Robson’s text, rhyme and mime with a maturity, confidence and unbashed abandon.
A panoply of disparate characters come out of the crescent moon-shadows, animated by loneliness, Life’s failure and capriciousness. In addition to frustrated ambition and in need of a jolly good seeing to by their neglecting partners. The construct and conceit harks back to Dylan Thomas’s Radio Play, Under Milk Wood, where mythical characters rub shoulders (and other parts) along side the venal, the vain and the humdrum existence. There is Cathy with a dissertation conclusion to complete but she’s nearly on the last episode, series two of Sex in the City. Hank, her existentialist cat, sick of mackerel, points out she surrenders her feminist credentials to ‘internalised mysoginy.’
A capella sea-shanties and evocative lays pepper the bombshell bon mots juxtaposed by tongue-tingling alliterative flights of fantasia. The property-grabbing Hipsters/Yuppies and their ‘twat-lattés get a deserved polemic. Lament for sad Laura, beware the sniper-shiteing seagulls. Sandstone has never been made more sexy.
An eloquent eulogy to Leith sur-la Mer (almost) – Go Forth! And Prosper.
