An hour can be a long time. A one man show is always a big task. I suspect that for Pete Reid the hours he will spend delivering this show this month will be long, and possibly lonely. On the evening that I attended there were eight people in a room that holds 50 or so in an island of seating in a much bigger space. There was a lot of empty space. Reid did his best to fill that space. He has a big, deep voice and much of the time was taken with songs of his own writing. Indeed he has written it all and delivers the material with the confidence and fluency that you would expect of an author.But an hour remains a long time. To carry a piece on your own for that long it has to have some real coherence. He produces a series of eight or so characters under three rough headings of Wild Men, Love Gone Wrong or Heartburn’s Edge and Death. As a recurring motif there is a boy in a well sending out cards that never reach a destination. There is a man searching for extra-terrestrial life, only to discover that when he finds it he has no-one significant to tell. One of the stronger characters is a murderess who escapes execution through misfortune on the part of the executioner but cannot cheat it later in private. The overall thesis appears to be that the edge is lonely and odd. That the edge is not somewhere that you can stay - you can either topple into the abyss or retreat to safety. This is not enough to hold the piece together. It is a brave performance, but not unmissable.
