The Scotsman

HOME HINDRANCE * * * *

SINCE last summer, when his beautiful audio drama Sussurus led audiences through Glasgow's Botanic Gardens, David Leddy has emerged as one of the most interesting dramatic writers on the Scottish scene, with his latest show again creating a frisson of strangeness and excitement.

Set in Leddy's own flat, at the top of a tower block in Broomhill, the play treads very familiar territory in its study of a group of middle-class twentysomethings traumatised by the death of one of their group. In one room after another, a lone character greets the tiny audience and offers a monologue about Rory, the person who has died.

Leddy's richly poetic script curls and echoes around the familiar landscape of loss with an eye for detail and a dislocated sense of time that perfectly mirrors the reality of bereavement.

There's perhaps no great new insight here, and the play's closing scene is both too long and a shade predictable. But the ordinary-yet-extraordinary domestic setting combines with the haunting quality of Leddy's script and the perfectly-focussed energy of Matthew Lenton's production for Vanishing Point, to create something exceptional.

In a superb team of actors, Paul Thomas Hickey as Rory's gay friend and Louise Ludgate as his mistress perhaps leave a special sense of sadness behind them. David Leddy's flat is the place to be over the next two weeks if you want to experience some mind-blowingly fine writing and acting, at uniquely close quarters.

Joyce McMillan , 8 May 2007.