After Party review – matters of life and death as flamboyant ‘glam-ma’ turns 80

4 hours ago 5

A celebratory family get-together leads to an almighty conflagration in Morna Young’s play. The birthday party reunion is a well-worn storytelling trope for explosive family reckonings – the Traverse featured another such party this time last year with Consumed, directed by Katie Posner, who helms this production, too.

Co-created by Young and Alex Fthenakis, the twist here is that flamboyant matriarch Vivienne (Alison Peebles), known as “glam-ma” to her grandchildren, is throwing an 80th birthday party and then plans to die the very next day. She has terminal cancer so has arranged her death, although we are not told how she has managed that, given assisted dying is currently illegal in Scotland, as well as England and Wales. Is this a near or alternate future – or merely wishful thinking?

It seems like the present, and every other feature is grounded in realism. Richard Kent’s set design consists of vividly lit, opulent rooms, only marred by a tacky photographic backdrop of windows and mountains (why?).

The cast of After Party sit at a long table

The first act proceeds like a farce. Vivienne’s two children are caricatures, Lily (Hilary Maclean) a tub-thumping Christian who prays aloud and Geoff (Gilly Gilchrist) a soulless type who is waiting to inherit her money. Neither want to care for Vivienne in her last days – a theme touched upon but dropped. The siblings are both broadly drawn, as are the grandchildren, though they are more charming – James (Angus Yellowlees), who adores “glam-ma” and brings his famous singer girlfriend, Cassandra (Ruby Glyne), to the party, as well as Geoff’s influencer daughter, Sasha (Rachel Dick).

Family tensions and fights abound, all in a comic vein, in the first, unsatisfactory act. There are lines with verve in the script, but it is too tonally flat. Although the scenario resembles that of the recently staged grief comedy Relics, at London’s Lyric Hammersmith, the humour is nowhere near as sharp.

The assisted dying element of the story is confusing, too – why take such a political hot-potato and then sidestep it, to the point of failing to acknowledge it is the subject of debate? It becomes hard to suspend your disbelief when you don’t know the terms.

The second act, which is less farcical and more emotionally true. A moving chemistry forms between Vivienne and her long-term partner, Carol (Liz Kettle), a stoical woman who was once Geoff’s wife. Vivienne’s death ultimately feels like a good death, and maybe the point of the play is to show the humanity of assisted dying. There is richness and wisdom in the script but as endings go, this play takes too long to get there.