The title will make Anglophone theatre-goers think of a celestial being with wings, but we soon hear that it’s spoken the Hispanic way – Ang-hell – and refers to the character played by comedian Phil Nichol in Dave Florez’s monologue.
To jaunty circus music, Nichol bursts on to the stage and plays a frenzied interactive game with us, which involves throwing and catching a bag. This done, he declares that the fun part of the production is over, and that we will now hear a dark tale which is “not a love story” and “has no moral”. The bag later darkly reappears as a prop.
Angel is a Spanish immigrant to Scotland who, at primary school, suffers hostility that may be racial but takes the form of attempted sexual mutilation by Lorna, whom, despite her assault, he continues to adore. During several encounters into adulthood, Angel is exposed to a dark, sexual psycho-pathology that he only understands long after most of the audience will surely have got there.
It’s a tribute to Nichol that he inhabits the character so entirely that the uninitiated might think he had written or was even improvising the script, but the words often feel problematic. Lorna’s experiences are often described in gynaecological and obstetric detail that can sound, in the character’s voice, misogynistic, which the writer may have intended – although it’s unclear what purpose this would serve. And while we have been told to seek no moral, the use of sentimentally manipulative musical cues by director Hannah Eidinow seems to be an attempt to impose emotional weight.
The point of the piece may be the ease with which society ignores sexual abuse of children, but I’m never sure how, as a live audience, we are supposed to react to such accusations of moral passivity. Should we walk out and phone in the characters’ names to Esther Rantzen, or Operation Yewtree?
• Until 31 August at Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh. Box ofice: 0131-622 6555.
