Review: VL

Universal evocation. Nice idea if you can nail it. Setting a play in a school gets you 100% audience buy-in. Young or old, we have all been there and have our memories of it. For some it is perhaps the best days of their lives. For most, probably not. VL, written by Kieran Hurley and Gary McNair, is set in a secondary school and the ghost of that place clearly comes flooding back for a good deal of the audience.

VL stands for ‘Virgin Lips’, the unwanted label pinned to your back (sometimes literally) upon reaching a certain year at school having not yet knowingly kissed someone. The very worst thing you can be is the last person unkissed (goths get a pass on account of their general otherworldliness). We meet Max (Scott Fletcher) and Stevie (Gavin Jon Wright) as they race for a bus only to miss it. The next bus is not for another hour and now the two teenagers have time to ponder their plight. Their status is both the same and yet different due to Stevie claiming a technicality. The focus falls on Max to lose his lip virginity, and subsequently plans, to be executed tonight, are hatched. Stevie has a list of unlikely candidates (including a teacher). Aghast at the names being uttered by his pal, Max has other plans: a long-standing love-interest. It is here, we witness the genius of Orla O’Loughlin’s direction. A multiplicity of characters are brought to the fore by Wright, including a teacher and Wee Cosa, an undersized bully coasting on his family connections. Wright’s manifestation of Max’s love interest is truly sweet. Near levitating on roller blades, the spirit of this girl is evoked as though existing on another plane which, of course, she is: a projection mounted on a pedestal. Wright and Fletcher, significantly older than the characters they play, are revelatory in their capture of teenage angst and fizz with energy. It is an unambiguous testament to their sheer acting prowess that these two actors are able to flawlessly conjure the raw inner-modality of Max and Stevie. Their chemistry motors the play on. And setting the play in the round helps break the fourth wall to allow for subtle audience engagement.

Whilst the universal setting is instantly recognisable, it is not seen equally by different eyes. If there is a wrinkle, it rests on the question of ‘why now?’. Often that question is easily answered by playwrights and audiences alike. Here, though, audiences bring with them their own private Idaho that is their school experience. The text suggests the 1990s: no reference to mobile phones and rap increasingly being seen as the lingua franca of the class-room. However, the morality of that era is not redolent of the words spoken by Wright as Max’s love interest which evokes a different era altogether: the spirit of the 2010s. It is used as a counter-point to the intentionally ludicrous masculinity which runs throughout the performance, yet seems unmoored from the timeline which frames it.

The dénouement is touching with ‘technicality’ winning both the day and the audiences’ hearts.

VL runs until 26th Aug at the Roundabout@Summerhall, Edinburgh.