Music Round The Fire

A gathering on the beach for a Saturday afternoon. We walked by on our way to Musselburgh where we went to see a one-act play at the Brunton Theatre. David Hayman as Bob Cunningham in The Cause of Thunder was a little disappointing. It took an age to get started, and there was too much reliance on getting laughs from bad language. With precious little plot it felt more like a speech than a play. One of the people we went with said it was like a rousing speech at a political conference and that probably describes it quite well. Preaching to the already converted it provided no insight or even potential ammunition to use in its avowed intention (at least going by the Q&A afterwards) of encouraging each audience member to go out and persuade a 'No' to vote 'Yes' next time. Interesting to compare with The Big Red Shed that we saw last year, another political piece that got round the limitations of the single actor by getting audience members up on the stage rather than imagining other characters and creating a bar where the barman had gone missing leaving an honesty box. For me, I just thought, 'why don't you want to pay other actors'. And there were other threads to pull at - there were repeated jibes at those staying in 'watching Strictly', from an actor who has just been in a major BBC TV drama - presumably he is happy for people to stay in and watch his show. It gave us plenty to talk about I suppose, as we moved to the Skylark for a couple of drinks.