It is very strange to see the cast of Dundee Rep's recent superb production of A Winter's Tale transposed to Mince?, a new musical of fabulous lunacy set in the mind of a TV ad jingle writer. All credit to them that they can switch from dark tragedy to a camp pastiche of easy-listening sounds and styles so smoothly.
Written and composed by actor Forbes Masson, it follows Stiff!, his first musical, set in the world of a mortician. Mince? is as unlikely a proposition: a therapist gets a mobile phone connection into the mind of Donald Johnstone, the troubled star of Scottish advertising. He may have won an award for his McKinnon's Mince campaign, but his life is in shreds. His relationship with Rhona Boak (an abattoir worker who gets a makeover for the campaign into Marilyn Montrose) is over; his father is slipping into dementia; his friendship with business partner Hunter Cunningham (beautifully played like Liam Gallagher by Billy Mack) is damaging him. These details sum up the play's mood - madly, deeply funny at times, darkly sombre at others.
The pace slackens slightly in the second act, but this is a fine evening's entertainment - popular but not populist, smart (film-type credits are projected on to the stage) but not pompous. Tom Piper's set moves from therapist's office to easy-listening lounge, meat processing works and claustrophobic family home, each set to lush lounge sounds by Gordon Dougall.
"What's nearly fact and what's clearly fiction" is what Johnstone has to find out for himself. For all the madness of Mince? and its glorious pantomime tomfoolery - think Rocky Horror Show meets Burt Bacharach - this is the serious issue that the play tackles: how we all have to work that one out as we grow up.
Until May 19. Box office: 01382 223530.
