BLACK DIAMONDS AND THE BLUE BRAZIL | ROYAL LYCEUM, EDINBURGH
★★★★★
“Powerful theatre that embodies the Scottish psyche…”
Heart-wrenchingly honest and darkly funny, Black Diamonds and The Blue Brazil, sees James Brining’s inaugural season as artistic director of Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum continue with a quite perfect piece of theatre that confirms his commitment to place community at the heart of the Company’s work.
Family, love, loss and passion lie are the lifeblood of this tender yet often hilarious play, adapted for the stage by Gary McNair from Ron Ferguson’s novel of the same name – Black Diamonds reflects the coal-mining history of Cowdenbeath, where the piece is set, while The Blue Brazil is the unlikely nickname of the town’s semi-professional and famously unsuccessful football team, Cowdenbeath FC.
Sally escaped the small town mentality of the Fife town for a career in London long ago. Now a trainee solicitor, her plans are going well; she’s on the verge of becoming a partner in the prestigious law firm where she works. When her dad dies suddenly she finds all her hard work in jeopardy when a reluctant trip home, an unexpected last request combine, guilt, grief and a long buried ghost from the past combine to slowly pull her back to the home she thought she had left forever.
And so we meet Sally, Dawn Steele in a flawless performance, in The Blue Brazil’s social club, surrounded by memories of her dad, the club’s most passionate fan.
When Steele arrives on Jessica Worrall’s wonderfully period set, all polystyrene tiled ceiling, shiny blue slash curtain, leather seating and wooden panels, it’s so authentic you can almost smell the stale beer and smoke in the carpets. The scene is set instantly, it’s the Summer of 1992, the year Cowdenbeath were promoted to the Scottish Football League’s First Division.
Winning the audience from the off with a warm, conversational prologue delivered with easy confidence, the fourth wall is broken instantly drawing in those in the auditorium while making them an integral part of the production – the inspired decision by lighting designer Simon Wilkinson to keep the house lights up at this point serves to augment that connection.
It’s a connection Steele never loses in what is a masterclass of stagecraft, her audience in her thrall, hanging on every word as the story unfolds. ‘It’s the stories that keep community alive… and matter in the end,’ her character declares as, for the next two hours McNair’s script treads the fine lines between passion and obsession, and anguish and remorse. It is storytelling at its finest and like all the best family dramas, it’s complicated.
Told in flashback, Barrie Hunter’s Dad, a simple man with simple pleasures, or perhaps more accurately simple pleasure, as he lives for his Blue Brazil, is a warm, caring working class hero surviving as best he can. Hunter brings a lovely depth to the character and as father and daughter, Hunter and Steele nail that most complex of relationships.
Both are joined by Deacon Blue frontman, Ricky Ross, at the keys of his upright piano on social club’s stage, from where he performs the 13 songs he has penned for the piece, his rich, occasionally gruff vocal delivery building the emotion while illuminating the soul of the narrative.
And don’t worry, if football isn’t your thing, don’t let that put you off, here football is simply a metaphor for community – in their heyday, the townsfolk attended Central Park, home of Cowdenbeath FC, in their thousands to support the miners who headed there to represent their local community straight from their shift; ‘the coal dust still on their backs’. Their story, including tragedies such as the Mossmorran and Lindsay pit disasters in which 17 lives were lost, interwoven into the fabric of the town, offering a focus for the locals to come together to lament and support each other.
Brining’s assured direction is intricate and considered, contrasting the dark humour of the piece with the tenderness of the telling and simmering anger and frustrations that lie just beneath the surface. Accessible and always entertaining, Black Diamonds and The Blue Brazil embodies the psyche of working Scottish communities of the past and, arguably, the present.
You could say, it scores on every level.
Tickets HERE
Saw it last Thursday…. took me back to the halcyon days of Liverpool Playhouse in the early 80’s with the triumvirate of in-house writers, Willy Russell, Alan Bleasdale & Chris Bond. Earthy tragi-comedic spell-binding drama…. bravo Edinburgh Lyceum for your imagination and endeavour