Wide Asleep

Iain Heggie, at various points in his long career, has justifiably been considered one of Scotland’s big name playwrights. A show in which he takes to the stage as raconteur and crooner, then, is a curious career deviation.

He’s not new to performing, but nonetheless seems ill-at-ease as he tells his audience stories of fraught interactions with bawdy neighbours, time-wasters, harsh critics and unwelcoming friends. His stories are laced with wit and charm enough to raise regular smiles and occasional laughs, but these monologues are delivered haltingly, with frequent reference to pages on a lectern. There’s a shambolic quality, but not enough that it seems like a point of style – in truth, when he mentions his director at one point, it comes as a surprise to realise that this is a show that has been directed, beyond the seven-word instruction: “Stand; sing; sit; drink water; talk. Repeat.”

The songs are very hard to justify, unless one assumes that they exist to break up an otherwise unpalatable 75 minutes of solid monologue, or to satisfy needs Rock Band can’t meet. His voice has a pleasant tone (not unlike Morrissey’s) but no real power or song craft, and the same could be said of the lyrical content. The preferred option would have been to cut the songs and take the hit of an unbroken hour of Rikki Fulton blether, but that then raises the unanswered question: really, what is the point of all this?