In this new play from the Just Like The Precipitation Theatre Company, Declan drags his childhood friends JJ, Alistair and Robbie to a decidedly grotty hotel in Edinburgh during the festival to tell them of his engagement to his girlfriend Abby. Once they find themselves locked in a windowless room after a mishap with the door handle, another revelation emerges that exacerbates underlying tensions within the group and threatens their friendship.
At odds with its zany title, Suicidal Tendencies is a brave and ambitious piece that explores how young men react when forced to face their own mortality. The intense subject matter, from Robbie’s deceased father to Alistair’s heartbreaking secret, is handled with remarkable maturity as the characters struggle with issues they would normally avoid, fittingly reflected by the claustrophobic setting. Chris MacFarlane (Alistair) and Martin Hammond (Robbie) were both particularly convincing as young men trying to come to terms with tragic experiences.
The show is, however, far from despondent and the script, by playwright Sarah Hailstones, derives a welcome amount of humour from the situation throughout, in particular the way the four mock each other. The use of pop culture references felt natural apart from a slightly hackneyed Thatcher mention that was just about saved by Hammond’s delivery.
The dialogue was slightly affected at times and the show began to drift during the second half until JJ’s anecdote. Whilst a humorous interlude, this comes out of nowhere and seems to have been included solely to justify giving the play such a bizarre title.
It was slightly odd to discover that the four characters were written as being in their late twenties when the actors themselves are clearly not. Whilst the dynamic between the four was largely believable, when Alistair asked out loud, “Do you wonder why any of us are friends?”, it felt like the question was missing the words ‘with JJ?’ Although acted with great relish by Oliver Giggins, JJ is such an insensitive, even downright odious figure, that childhood bonds didn’t seem enough to explain his friendship with the others, particularly the convivial Declan, played as aptly unassuming by John Lake.
This aside, the play is a largely well-realised portrayal of adolescent male relationships and deserves great credit for broaching a number of challenging topics without pretending that it has any definitive answers.
