Midsummer (in the snow)

While other theatre bloggers are still hiding like crocuses under a deep blanket of snow, my first outing of 2010 was to the Soho Theatre to see this 'play with songs' by David Greig, which I tried and failed to see in August at the Traverse at the start of the Edinburgh Fringe. Was it worth the trudge through the snow?  Yes and no.  I liked the performances by Cora Bisset and Matthew Pidgeon very much, and I found the fluid semi-narrative style of the play very innovative and refreshing. The performers accompany themselves on guitar and the songs have a faintly Simon-and-Garfunkel flavour.  As a story of an ill-matched couple enjoying themselves on a lost midsummer weekend in Edinburgh, the play probably worked better on a warm night at the Traverse than in deep midwinter in Soho.  What ultimately got on my nerves was the tawdriness and self-absorption of the two main characters, neither of whom revealed any hidden depths.  Helen is 35, a single lawyer with a weakness for drink who's having an affair with someone else's husband.  Bob is the same age, a failed poet and drifter who handles stolen cars for a crime boss.  Greig tries to imbue both of these self-centred wasters with a certain degree of mawkish charm, but I found the story of their hedonistic weekend, financed with £15,000 in used notes belonging to someone else, quite unappealing. Perhaps that's the moral voice of my god-fearing Scottish Presbyterian ancestors speaking.  Sentimental and superficial but rather lightweight, this show ultimately left me colder than the streets outside.