About Money – Summerhall – TechCube 0 – 10.20am
IT’S an early slot, 10.20am, but worth setting your alarm clock to get up to Summer Hall to see About Money.
Some people’s lives are easy, some less so, and some lives are very complicated and difficult. About Money is set in a deprived part of Glasgow and tells the tale of Shaun (Michael McCardie) and his eight-year-old sister, Sophie (Lois Hagerty). Shaun is the sole kinship carer for his sister while trying to hold down a zero hours’ contract in a fast food restaurant.
Difficult enough one might say but it gets more complicated. Sophie and Shaun’s father is a dysfunctional violent drunk and their deceased mother was a loving but weak individual. Shaun needs more hours to work, but not the night hours he is currently working to earn more money to ensure that social services do not take his sister into care. It is truly a hellish unresolvable cycle common to many. While at work his pal, Eddie (Mathew Boyle), looks after Sophie in the role of the wonderfully entertaining adopted uncle. But Eddie has got escape velocity from the Glasgow estates and is off to college, leaving Shaun in an unenviable position. How to care for Sophie while working longer hours. Those extra hours are pleaded for to his unsympathetic boss (Rohit Kumar). I won’t tell you what happens as it would ruin the entertainment of this play.
This script could have been a political rant with sharp edges and shouty. It is none of these. Instead, it’s a beautifully-written script by Eliza Gearty. It is well observed, emotionally discrete and, at the same time, full of sadness and desperation. But throughout there is an extremely skilfully thread sown into the script. Is the sibling love between Shaun and Sophie enough to escape their current hell?
At the end of the play, one is left with a strong desire for Sophie and Shaun to be happy and all the problems resolved. The vehicle to arrive at this Nirvana is their mutual sibling love. But as you leave the theatre you do question whether that love is enough to get them to that destination.
It really is great stuff.
FOUR STARS
Get the full details about the show here.
Plus, read more reviews from the opening days of the 2022 Edinburgh Festival Fringe on Scottish Field’s Fringe pages.
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