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Royal Lyceum, EdinburghThis update with Elaine C Smith focuses on Scotland’s landowning class but struggles to make the satire funny
There are sad drunks and there are happy drunks. Elaine C Smith’s Mrs Puntila is a relentless drunk. In Denise Mina’s cross-cast Brecht update, the actor ploughs ahead with the sturdy determination – and lack of nuance – of a seasoned boozer.
In this socialist satire, she is a millionaire who swings from intolerance to benevolence the more she drinks. But Smith paints the benevolent Puntila with too broad a brush stroke. Her drunken outrage at social injustice should be funny – or at least heavily ironic – and the inner compassion released by the bottle should be endearing. Instead, the inebriated Puntila comes across as troublesome, contrary and, oddly, not especially different from her sober self. There have been productions where the drunk/sober joke wears thin, but this one struggles to make it funny in the first place. Continue reading...