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VL

 
Joy Watters Review by Joy Watters 4 Published: 15 Aug 2024 Roundabout @ Summerhall Show Dates: 1 Aug 2024-26 Aug 2024

Two figures in matching eye-popping day glo tracksuits burst into the arena. Clearly, we must keep our eyes on Max and Stevie; are they about to engage in a gladiatorial fight to the death? No, it’s more serious than that, they are negotiating a teenage boy’s terrible rite of passage, the first kiss.

a brilliant

Max (Scott Fletcher) and Stevie (Gavin Jon Wright) first appeared in 2018 in the hit comedy Square Go. Playwrights Kieran Hurley and Gary McNair now put them in the second year at Hammerston High School preparing for the end of year dance in a fast-moving, hilarious, beautifully observed comedy. This time the pair deal with `never been kissed’ agony hence the title VL, Virgin Lips. The recognisable anguish of those days hilariously evoked for onlookers of all ages.

Orla O’Loughlin’s direction is pitch perfect, the comedy and poignancy of the situation zapping round the arena (a perfect space for the show) and into the audience.

Fletcher and Wright’s performances do not miss a beat as these two grown up actors inhabit the torrid world of teendom. Our heroes both deny being VLs, creating rules about the eligibility of their alleged snogs. We spend the evening of the dance with them with hilarious one-liners and observations sparking off by the minute.

Fletcher’s Max, a sensitive soul tries but fails to play it cool while Wright’s Stevie is all talk, mainly malapropisms. Wright also takes on a clutch of other characters, each a polished cameo, the laid back girl classmate the boys adore, the rapping class bully, Max’s mother’s horrible boyfriend.

A brilliantly hilarious eighty-minute depiction.of the tribulations of youth.

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The Blurb:

Max and Stevie are just two wee guys trying to survive in an ordinary Scottish secondary school. But to survive, sometimes you need to hide. And there's no hiding when you're a VL. VL = Virgin Lips. It means you've never kissed a lassie, or a laddie. The longer you stay a VL, the more of a VL you become. The producers of Fleabag bring you another riotous comedy from the Fringe First Award-winning writers of Square Go, Kieran Hurley and Gary McNair, about young boys trying to navigate romance in the hormonal pressure cooker of a small-town school.