Anna Burnside reviews a production 'with so much to enjoy.'
For those spared the indignities of a Scottish high school education, V.L. stands for “virgin lips”. It’s a badge of shame for the unkissed, and Stevie is on a mission to lose the label at the end-of-year dance.
Wingman Max has compiled a list of winchable prospects. His cousin has also provided a cheat sheet of chat-up lines, some of which Stevie thinks might be illegal.
VL is Gary McNair and Kieran Hurley’s sequel to 2018’s Square Go, with Scott Fletcher and Gavin Jon Wright reprising their roles as the wee guys navigating adolescence and its terrifying rites of passage.
McNair and Hurley’s writing is even sharper this time around, and Orla O’Laughlin’s taut direction brings out every zinging line and cringe-inducing observation. There’s so much to enjoy: Max’s love of inappropriate big words. The nicknames. The description of the school disco, held in an ice rink, where one year Bupo ate a shoe.
Fletcher, now 36, is still very comfortable in the neon tracksuit of the daft wee laddie. Wright looks older but is completely convincing as the Strawbery Lace-munching Max as well as doubling as rollerskating love interest Sheila McGeechie and Stevie’s nemesis, Wee Cozza.
It’s worth seeing VL for Wee Cozza’s excruciating raps, which are mainly about balls, alone. The audience honked and snorted with laughter. If it’s all autobiographical, and McNair and Hurley were tormented throughout their schooldays, it was not in vain.
VL performs at Summerhall until August 26, 2024 (not the 20th).
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