When Frank Skinner was on the way up as an Edinburgh fringe comic, he appeared on the front cover of the List magazine, peering round the door of a public toilet, all cheeky-chappy grin and twinkly eyes. “Who’s the filthiest man on the fringe?” ran the cover line. Twenty-seven years later he’s making his debut as a playwright as part of a BBC Arts project to encourage established professionals to turn their skills to the theatre, and his appetite for toilet humour is undiminished.
The early stages of Nina’s Got News consist of little more than an end-of-the-pier exchange about the former sex life of Jessica Clark’s Nina and Rob Auton’s Chris. “Our penetration days are behind us,” says Nina, like no ex-girlfriend has said ever – even in the name of wit. Auton’s reactions are so soporific that it’s a wonder their penetration days ever began.
It is fitfully funny – if Skinner knows anything it’s how to craft a joke – but one-liners are a poor substitute for convincing characterisation and, in a stilted production by Polina Kalinina, it’s hard to believe this couple have ever met, let alone played a significant part in each other’s lives. The arrival of Breffni Holahan’s Vanessa to hear the news of her best friend Nina and to squabble with Chris seems no more likely, especially given the alienating echo that makes a bedsit kitchen sound like a cathedral. With no apparent motivation, the constant banter between Vanessa and Chris is wearisome.
A more physically aware production might have shown off Skinner’s script to better effect, and to the writer’s credit, Nina’s news comes as a genuine surprise (no, she’s not pregnant). Surprising enough, in fact, to test the audience’s credulity in an interesting way, asking us to consider the possibility of miracles. But just as it looks as if the Roman Catholic playwright is about to explore the mystery of faith and the nature of prayer, like few authors have done since TS Eliot and Graham Greene, he brings things to an abrupt close. Praise be.
- At the Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh, until 26 August.
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