ALIEN encounters

Often the measure of good art is not how well it tackles the subject matter in hand but how much it resonates beyond it. Writer/ director John Retallack's Hannah And Hanna is an issue-based play for teenagers, addressing their attitudes to asylum-seekers. But it comfortably transcends that remit to become a drama of universal appeal that will engage audiences of all ages and could bring a tear to a gargoyle's eye.

On the face of it, this is a simple story about over-coming prejudice and peer pressure. Set mainly in the seaside town of Margate, it follows two 16-year-old girls - one English, the other an asylum-seeker from Kosovo.

The progression of their relationship from hostility to deep affection is far from unpredictable, though it is told with great clarity and delicacy. But Retallack weaves into this classic story- line a subtle theme of confinement and freedom, one which touches the roots of the tribal hatred that drove Hanna's family from Kosovo; then greeted them in Britain.

Equally striking is the refreshing simplicity of Retallack's award- winning production. Jenny Platt (English Hannah) and Erin Brodie (Kosovar Hanna) bring to life not just the two girls but also their families and even, at one point, a clash between factions of the British National Party and the Anti Nazi League. The pair also sing much of the soundtrack, made up of recent pop songs, and pull off some deft dance moves choreographed by Andy Howitt, formerly of Scotland's TAG Theatre Company. Hannah And Hanna is everything theatre should be - entertaining, intelligent, unpretentious and deeply moving; not only topical, but relevant to all audiences.

It's the absence of that universality that I find so unappealing about A Skull In Connemara. Martin McDonagh - whose Beauty Queen Of Leenane played to acclaim in Glasgow last May - is so obsessively fascinated with the cliches of Oirishry that he winds up wallowing in blarney.

His play has no shortage of lofty reference points: its gravediggers and skulls from Hamlet; its bloodied pates and surprise resurrections from The Playboy Of The Western World; its title from Waiting For Godot. It's also crammed full of heavy-handed symbolism, such as empty graves and exhumed human bones smashed up with mallets. But its action and characters are steeped in cliche and caricature.

Set in the house and workplace of gravedigger Mick Dowd, the play centres on the disappearing remains of his wife, whom he killed in a drunken car crash - though rumour suggests it was no accident. The scenario might have been teased into a gripping, funny drama if Dowd were pit against more doughty protagonists, but McDonagh surrounds him instead with a menagerie of stock characters: a frazzled oul' widow, an eejit full of poteen and that evergreen staple, a witless policeman. I suppose an Irish audience might find the irony rich and resonant, but to these eyes and ears there's nothing to latch onto beyond broad, not very funny farce.

To be fair, Alasdair McCrone's trim production is performed by a highly convincing, half-Irish cast whose energy serves the play well. But if there's any serious content here that isn't to do with Irish social history it gave me a very wide berth.

Worryingly, I found more affinity with the menopausal women in Parking Lot In Pittsburgh. Anne Downie's black comedy first saw light at the Byre Theatre, St Andrews, last year and is now revived for a tour with most of the original cast.

Eileen McCallum stars as Maggie, a Scotswoman who emigrated to America when war injuries made a wreck of her fiance.

Across the ocean, she found benevolent employers and - it's rumoured - made a mint from the real estate of the title. The action begins when she returns home an invalid, falling back on the love and hospitality of her four sisters. Gradually, she discovers that these are contingent on being named in her will.

Ken Alexander directs an experienced cast with plenty of polish - and a stylistic dimension is added by chorus work by Vari Sylvester, Hope Ross, Anne Myatt and Ann Scott-Jones as the sisters and Shonagh Price, who doubles as young Maggie and her niece Mairi-Clare.

But although it touches on harder issues - such as Scotland's tolerance of domestic violence - it ultimately proves to be a rather rambling cautionary tale with an oddly misleading prologue.

The jokes about HRT went down a storm in Glasgow - no surprise: this play will hold most appeal for Scottish women of a certain age. Not a universal audience, then, but a broad one.

Copyright 2002
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