Theatre

Brigadoom

Oran Mor, Glasgow

Mary Brennan

three stars

WE ARE where a lot of audiences like to be: behind-the-scenes, eavesdropping on the tensions that suggest things won’t be alright on the night. That’s if there is an opening night, something that is beginning to look unlikely for the latest musical collaboration between Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. Auditions for Brigadoon have failed to find a leading lady for the role of Fiona. Loewe is running out of patience with Lerner: why can’t they cast a proven all-singing,all-dancing, acting talent like Marion Bell? Lerner’s objection is Broadway eccentricity in a nutshell – her name has only ten letters in it, and his lucky number is thirteen.

Tony Cox’s brief slice of musical whimsy has an enjoyable scattering of such facts, as if mischievously trying to convince us that a girl called Heather from Motherwell came close to winning the role, and Lerner’s susceptible heart. Actually, that’s not as far-fetched as the notion of a picturesque wee Scottish village that manifests once in every hundred years, and then only for a day. But while Lerner (Ali Watt) is sketching out romantic escapism, and Loewe (Graham MacKay-Bruce) is setting it to music, the voice of reality – complete with Scottish accent – is bursting their tartan-coloured, whisky-tinged bubble.

Heather (Kay McAllister) knows her homeland’s history: 1746 might seem a quaint starting point for Lerner, but to Heather it means Culloden and blood-soaked oppression. Should the truth be allowed to get in the way of a good tune? Especially a song like "Almost Like Being in Love", which the trio deliver in rousing style as a finale. It would have been good to hear a lot more of the score, and maybe some more of the wranglings between Lerner and Loewe, but like Brigadoon, this is a tantalisingly fleeting apparition. By the way, Marion Bell was the original Fiona (in 1947) after all.