Last Night Things Happened...

Review by Sophie Vukovic | 16 Aug 2009

This year as any other, Edinburgh is abuzz with new writers hoping that 2009 will see them break into the big time. Moreover, punters are willing to take the chance of seeing obscure and unknown shows and lord it over their obviously less cultured friends.

For new writing enthusiasts, Christopher Harrisson’s Last Night Things Happened… certainly stands its ground in terms of imagination and fresh ideas. It plays out like a morbid dream sequence, in which Boy (Fredrick Manners) wakes up to find himself about to be sliced into pieces in a human slaughterhouse.

Winningly bewildered, Manners’ Boy sets out to find his way home, encountering surreal scenarios and eccentric characters reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. The world of literature and real life are entangled onstage as Boy meets a quite literal “character assassin” armed with a dagger, on his way to find his next victim.

Quirky and bizarre, the characters also reveal a deeper existential struggle. A grossly fat man, admirably played by Beth Cannon, overeats to counter the tugging of a proverbial balloon that threatens to lift him up into oblivion, while an old woman still mourning the loss of her true love attempts to control death by catching its shadow.

Unfortunately disjointed at times, the play is further brought down at times by overly straightforward acting. But as far as ideas go, Last Night Things Happened has them in abundance.