Pause with A Smile

Once upon a time there was a company called Forced Entertainment. They made theatre that was funny and emotional, and everybody liked them. Alas, Forced Entertainment had a cold cold heart, and their plays slowly froze, until watching them felt like taking a holiday in someone else’s misery. Even more unfortunately, it wasn’t the company’s misery, as they were well funded by the Arts Council. Their most recent show was the visual equivalent of a Hampstead Dinner Party in a K-Hole.

Forced Entertainment did leave a legacy, though, when it was viral and imaginative. Pause with a Smile does owe something to The Ents: the chatty style, the direct address to the audience, the fascination with minutiae, the emphasis on the word over the body for communication. Writer and director Gareth Nicoll fortunately lacks Forced Entertainment’s bourgeois cynicism. Pause with a Smile is a cheery ramble through those strange-but-true articles featured in magazines that are usually full of celebrity gossip and sex tips to keep your man.

The strength of the play lies on the chummy camaraderie of Kieran Hurley and Gary McNair. Hitch and Captain Crunch ponder tales of the unexpected, from the odds of two people sharing a birthday in the audience, through a choir surviving an explosion in their church, to the very existence of life itself. If Hurley wanders into some dark territory – unsurprisingly from the man who is most famous for a monologue about protesting a political summit – it is quickly rescued with the help of a random tape selection.

Nicholls, Hurley and McNair have fun toying with their influences – apart from Forced Entertainment, there are hints of Tim Crouch’s Fisher Price duologues and old school character comedy - to capture the friendly awe these stories are supposed to conjure. Appropriately, Pause is never taken in by the cod-mysticism of the coincidence, or collapsing into conspiracy theory. And by pairing Hitch and Crunch, it immediately creates a double act that is comforting and funny.

Pause is a cheery whistle in the dark. The moments of cosmic reflection are reminders of a world beyond the cosy certainties of the stories, but never overwhelm the easy-going charm of Glasgow’s own Odd Couple. It is possible to imagine this team staying together and becoming a familiar treat. In the darkness beyond, Forced Entertainment can howl about how bad the world is, if you don’t have the comfort of being an internationally famous performance company: Pause with a Smile is a more resilient response.