O Sole Mio @ Sloans

The use of Sloan’s upstairs bar for a play is to be welcomed. With the non-stop action of the bar below – film nights, pub quizzes – opening up this flexible space gives young companies a chance to put their work in a popular venue, without being forced to use a traditional stage format.

Tonight’s opening hidentity is more of a poetry recitation than a play: winningly sliding from emotional despair to pride and success, Peter Callaghan captivated the crowd with his sharp verse and taut delivery. As an appetiser for the main course, hidentity warmed up the crowd’s emotional muscles and delivered a short double punch of comedy and tragedy.

O Sole Mio is a two-hander farce, with the two actors leaping between roles with abandon, from prim hopeful to slutty wife, geeky blind dater to passionate pensioner. The script is sentimental, laughing at the foibles of the characters yet never getting too nasty. The plot is quickly resolved, and the emotional chase of the blind date soon becomes a literal chase of mistaken identities.

Not the sort of play that graces the larger venues – this alone reminds how important opening up Sloan’s is – it becomes the missing link between the grand touring shows of The Theatre Royal and the experiments of The Arches. The writing feels almost like a television sit-com, the romantic resolution more fantastic than natural. This is theatre as fun, rather than high art, an important addition to the city’s scene and one that I usually miss, in my melodramatic searches for intense feelings and meaning.