A Review

I went to see the penultimate performance of The Corstorphine Road Nativity in the Festival Theatre yesterday afternoon, and left my hat behind to boot. Although that wasn’t really indicative of anything other than my own retardidity.

The premise of the show is a school nativity where the little kiddlywinks are played by adults. Hilarity ensues, along with some sad bits when you read between the lines of what the kids are saying and get a glimpse into their lives - there’s some stuff they haven’t quite got a handle on yet. S’a good dramatic device, that.

The rivalry between the girls over who should be Mary (it should be the prettiest one, and Jenny Bennett isn’t the prettiest, I am) was well realised, as was the world-weary attitude of the kid who’s grown up on a farm and therefore knows how childbirth works. When she explained about the pancake of blood and the play-centre that come out as well as the bairn, a woman a few rows behind us just about killed herself laughing. How embarrassing for her.

But yes, it was all very fun, and the cast list ran like a veritable “who’s that again?” of Scottish acting talent, featuring Julie Wilson Nimmo (Miss Hoolie in Balamory), Sara Crowe (who did those adverts for philly cheese in the mid-nineties - she's the blonde), Gordon Kennedy (Absolutely, and more recently the BBC Robin Hood where they all have impossible hair – he was Little John), Shabana Bakhsh (Waterloo Road), Jane McCarry (Still Game), and none other than that ginger manny out of Taggart, Sir Colin McCredie aka DC Stuart ‘the gay one’ Fraser. NB, he is not a sir, except unofficially because he is the crème de la crème of Scottish telly. The best person in it, however, was the aforementioned farm kid, played by Gail Watson, who I think I saw in Sunshine on Leith at the start of the year.

One negative point, in my opinion, was the overlong scene where they all got changed and played the parents talking about the play afterwards. It seemed a bit haphazard and didn’t really add much – they could easily have cut it down to their song, which was quite nicely done and explained some of the kids’ misunderstandings from the first half. But overall, very nicely done. Keep an eye out in case they do it again next Christmas.