TO the uninitiated, “true crime fiction” might sound like a contradiction in terms. However, as Denise Mina’s acclaimed novel The Long Drop – now adapted for the Citizens Theatre stage by Linda McLean – attests, prose fiction that speculates about the whys and wherefores of real criminal events is very much a thing.
If Mina and McLean are to be believed (and they surely are), the Glasgow underworld of 1957 was one in which business and criminality displayed a positively Coppola-esque familiarity. It was also – needless to say – a very male-dominated world indeed.
Hence – while The Long Drop is the work of two of Scotland’s leading female authors – the play is performed by an exceptional cast of six men and just one woman. It tells the story of the brutal triple murder of the wife, daughter and sister-in-law of Glasgow businessman William Watt.
The drama unfolds some eight years before the abolition of the death penalty for murder in Scotland. So, when Watt found himself in the frame for the killings, it was more than his reputation and his business that were on the line.
The play is built around a night of intrigue and heavy drinking between Watt (who is played with tremendous desperation, obnoxiousness and ineptitude by Keith Fleming) and the psychopathic gangster Peter Manuel (rendered with a compelling – and chilling – combination of intelligence and cold cynicism by Brian Vernel).
The pair meet because Manuel has, he claims, information that will clear Watt’s name (information that, needless to say, Watt can acquire for a price).
During that long night, the pair visit places both extant (such as The Steps Bar on Glassford Street) and long gone. The action swirls around the stage, coming in and out of drinking holes, domestic residences, a courtroom, a police station and the Room 101 of business offices.
As it does so, it draws in a colourful panoply of characters. These range from the bleakly comic (and deeply sinister) “businessman” Dandy McKay (one of a trio of characters played by the ever-excellent Robert Jack) to the devoutly Catholic Brigit Manuel (Mary Gapinski superb as the mother of the irretrievably errant Peter).
The universally fantastic cast also includes Andy Clark and Martin Donaghy. We meet them first as a pair of world-weary prison officers, but, typically of this production, both actors offer equally fine performances in multiple roles.
Every element of director Dominic Hill’s beautifully constructed production is put at the service of the drama’s brilliantly sustained atmosphere. Composer Nikola Kodjabashia’s live music and sound – provided by actor-musicians (principally the multi-talented George Drennan) – alternate between the kind of tunes one would expect of mid-20th century TV crime thrillers and pieces that provide a subtle, emotive underlay to the play’s emerging themes.
Jen McGinley’s set designs – which play within a wooden Victorian frame that evokes a courthouse – are set in front of a Wild West mural that is both appropriate and perfectly Glaswegian in its incongruousness. The set’s improbable versatility is facilitated often and marvellously by Stuart Jenkins’s inventive lighting.
The writing is often funnier than its subject should allow. Its contemplations of human psychology – not least that of Peter Manuel at his most fantastical – are quite enthralling.
The drama is specific and of its time, but its themes – from greed and lust, to fear, violence, loyalty, bravery and cowardice – are eternal. This gripping, splendidly acted production expresses them with great theatrical style.
Until June 20: citz.co.uk
