Anna Burnside reviews a ‘deceptively simple love story’ that manages to impress and charm.
Jess meets Iona at a bus stop in Edinburgh during the festival. One flyer and some pretty good chat later, their bumpy love story is on its way.
Pinging around bars, terrible shows and more bus stops, they navigate a friendship that also includes fizzing attraction.
Writer Roisin Sheridan Bryson has pulled off a deceptively simple love story that meshes dialogue with inner monologues and plays fast and loose with the fourth wall. It’s impressionistic rather than lateral, jumping back and forward in time with a clever slow motion sequence and a great scene where Jess has concussion and thinks a drag queen is an angel.
Catriona Faint plays Jess like a radge from Trainspotting, hiding her vulnerability behind booze, vaping, bouncing around like a maddie and snogging randoms in clubs.
Leyla Aycan’s Iona is a quieter presence, tolerant of a friend who pees down one of the closes off the Royal Mile and gets into a fight with the bouncer who evicts them from a comedy gig.
Director Laila Noble choreographs them through a debauched night of Fringery where Jess will do literally anything to avoid talking about her feelings.
The staunchly Glaswegian PPP crowd enjoyed the opportunity to feel superior to Edinburgh and the thespy in-jokes went down well with regulars and industry types in the audience. But this show transcended these niche groups and left everyone in the room rooting for Jess and Iona. Big time.
Lost Girls/At Bus Stops performs at Oran Mor’s A Play, A Pie and A Pint until October 12, 2024. It then performs at the Traverse Theatre from October 15-19, 2024.
Photo by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.
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