There is something entrancing about watching an audience slowly become part of a story they thought they had simply come to watch.
Little Animals, Paul Ready’s lively one-man play, begins with a kind of wake. We are gathered in the round in a space that resembles a classroom, and Ready introduces us to James and his old friend Richard, two boys who grew up together through school days and became so close that one described the other as a “second skin”.
They protect each other from bullies and form an alliance that lasts, in one form or another, until the end. But university and adulthood take them in different directions. James finds his place within the system, while Richard becomes increasingly troubled by what that system represents, particularly its relentless consumption of the planet.
Ready, best known to many for the BBC comedies Motherland and Ann Droid, is a force of nature. This is an entirely different proposition from those familiar television roles. He moves around the audience, asks questions; we watch the answers come with a shake of the head or a nod, or a look, perhaps a smile, a reflection of sadness, and he swiftly moves on. There is something fascinating about watching people think before deciding whether to respond.
Richard’s concerns become more intense as the years pass. In a shopping centre, James describes a world where people are weighed down by their purchases, almost unable to walk beneath the weight of their plastic shopping bags crammed with items. It is an image of a society programmed to consume, finding meaning in what it can buy. Have we been brainwashed to spend, spend, spend? Ready becomes Richard at this point and approaches members of the audience and says: “My home is being destroyed; can you help me?” The question changes the atmosphere. In the shopping centre, Richard is treated as the madman. The police arrive, and he is taken away. His concern for the planet has become, to those around him, a liability.
Little Animals is not just a story about a man becoming increasingly radicalised by his concern for the environment. It is also a story about friendship and loyalty. James may fit more comfortably into the world that Richard rejects, but he does not simply turn his back on his friend. He stays loyal, even when that loyalty becomes difficult.
Ready gradually reveals the pressures surrounding James too. There is money, parenthood and the machinery of modern life. He tells stories, including some for his daughter, attempting to make sense of the world for her. At the same time, the questions become harder. Who is really in charge? What about those making the decisions acting in our interests, or even with our survival in mind?
There is a striking theatrical simplicity to Ready’s performance. There is nowhere to hide, and no elaborate production to distract from the words or the people listening to them. The audience becomes part of the landscape. As the story builds to a climax, torrential rain begins hammering on the roof. For a moment, the elements outside seem to have entered the play. Everything Richard has been talking about suddenly feels less like an argument and more like an immediate presence above our heads.
The applause that follows is rapturous, but it is also deeply moving, and you can see it in people’s faces. Little Animals leaves us with friendship, grief and the uncomfortable possibility that the stories we tell ourselves about how we live may not be enough.
Ready has written a play that asks difficult questions without allowing us the comfort of an easy answer. Most of all, it reminds us that sometimes the hardest thing is not recognising that a friend may be right, but remaining beside them when the rest of the world has decided they are wrong.
Little Animals Traverse @ The Lyceum Studio, Edinburgh, Until 30 August 2026
