Yer Granny is a brilliant comedy and at times cuts close to the bone with its rough Scottish humour, and the audience loved it giving the cast a well deserved standing ovation… a rumbusteous play with great characters and humour.
The theatre in Scotland is very live and well and this production from the National Theatre of Scotland certainly hit the spot with the Northern Ireland audience in the Lyric Theatre.
The Russo family are under pressure from a ravenous grannie (Nana) aka Gregor Fisher who played the award winning character, Rab C Nesbitt. Nana eats the family to death – literally!
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Gregor Fisher as Nana in Yer Grannie.[/caption]
Just when the plot complicates and you think that Nana is about to become a cropper as she stands in the way of the material welfare of her disloyal family, the plot twists and turns and ends in a very dramatic fashion with robust pyrotechnics. So a change of clean underwear is advised if you are sitting in or near the front row!
Nana has eaten her way through her family’s fish and chip shop and the individual pressures mount as they try and make ends meet.
Cleverly adapted from the original, La Nona by Roberto Cossa, and directed by Graham McClaren, Yer Granny certainly pushes at the boundaries. It touches on drugs, murder, an arranged marriage, a son with some odd sexual mores, and a liberal doze of man pride to make sure no sensible solution to the problem will work.
Set in a small flat above a chip shop in 1977 in the south of Glasgow, the action appears initially like a normal domestic scene. But soon you realise they are a dysfunctional family. The father of the family Cammy Russo idealistically is locked into the resurrection of the chip shop back to its glory days just in time for the Queen’s passing by during her Jubilee visit to Glasgow.
The flat has become an oasis for the wider Russo family and with Cammy and his wife Marie and daughter Marissa (20). Also living above the Minerva Fish Bar are Cammy’s failed musician brother Charles, aunt Angela who ends up trafficking e-tablets to keep the family afloat to great comic effect, and of course, Nana, whose extraordinary appetite is something to be seen.
The comedy unfolds in the first half, then complicates when the family decide a solution to Nana must be found. Charles schemes up an arranged marriage with their old business competitor, the lecherous Donnie Francisco, and Nana. But Donnie wants the delectable Melissa throw in for good measure.
As the action comes to a dramatic conclusion, after the loud bangs and smoke, the audience witness a scene of mayhem and devastation with everyone almost dead… except Nana who is still looking for food.
As the spotlight picks out Nana, as the Queen passes by, Nana says to her in her Glasgow accent in her quest for food eyeing up the Queen’s tempting bouquet of flowers: “S’at yev goat?” (‘What’s that you have got?)
This comedy is definitely worth a visit.
Come and see ‘Yer Granny‘ at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast. Tuesday 23 June – Monday 27 July | £10 – £24.50.
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