SquareOne Entertainment
by Katie Smyth
Rosa Brodie is having a bad time of it. It has been months since her husband Tony left her to take up jogging and wheatgerm with twenty years younger Lucy, “The Bitch,” and a relentless course of voodoo and book collecting have so far failed to return her beloved. Then one day Rosa is called on to identify the charred body of her rogue hubbie, so badly disfigured in a terrorist skirmish which led to his boss’ abduction, that only his “wee ears” are recognisable. But hope remains. A team of talented surgeons led by an eccentric German with a penchant for sedatives, sepositories and socialist women set about rebuilding Tony’s mangled face using the tissue from his buttocks.
All starts swimmingly and on the long road to recovery the former Fiat worker and union rep even extends his vocabulary to include “astronaut” and “concupiscence,” much to the frustration of his sloganeering spouse. The problem is he simply cannot recognise the woman he now calls madam as his wife. Matters are further complicated when a stranger with an identical face turns up and the investigation into Sir John Lamb’s abduction draws uncomfortably close.
In this intriguing, skillfully characterised McAvoy adaptation, The Lyceum masterfully transposes Dario Fo’s Italian farce to an Edinburgh sometime in the near future. Here David Cameron is Prime Minister, Paris Hilton a US senator and vibrating trams lend furniture a life of their own. Infidelity, mistaken identity and the ramblings of rehabilitation leave the audience gasping for breath in this rumbustious romp. Never has a meat grinder caused so many shoulders to shake, as the hapless Rosa force feeds Tony sausage through his nose. An inspired climax to the Lyceum’s impressive season.
Trumpets and Raspberries is showing at Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum until Sat 10 May
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