A Canadian play that should have been a hit Off-Broadway, Jonathan Wilson's Kilt moves from a Scottish unit in Tobruk in 1942 to a gay bar in Toronto in the 1990s, and finally Glascow for a funeral. The title item ties this unlikely progression together as we observe a young soldier on duty in North Africa and clad in a traditional kilt into his lookalike grandson dancing on a tabletop in the same kilt to entice male customers.
The story gets funnier as we meet dancer Tom's uptight mother Esther, who teaches traditional Highland dancing, then see him grudgingly agree to accompany her to Scotland for his grandfather's funeral, where his Aunt Mary spills the beans about his cantankerous mom. And whether tabledancing, picking up johns, sleeping or making out in bed, Tom, like grandpa Mac, the soldier (same actor), never gets out of that kilt. We see Mac meet Captain Lavery, a handsome officer also 22, and we see them flirt and kiss. But it takes awhile for Tom to learn that his heroic grandfather shared the same sexual inclinations. The discovery that an elderly man he meets in Glasgow was in fact Mac's lover is a liberating revelation to Tom but rather unsurprising to the audience.
If this all sounds a little slim and contrived, it is. But it's also a charming and rather sweet tale, enlivened by whimsically dysfunctional family interaction and a good deal of Scots color, dancing and gay romance.
Shipping Dock's threadbare production suffers from an awkward set of unnecessary step units and unsteady direction. Some bright lighting (or even a mirror-ball) could have establish when we are in the gay disco bar.
And much of the blocking seems arbitrary -- just to move the actors to another position without motivation. Moments like Tom's realization that his grandfather loved a man need heightening. The attractive and generally effective cast, however, is capable of more than director Maureen Mines gives them.
Ben Strickland makes nice vocal distinctions between his Tom and Mac and disco-dances seductively, though his Highland dancing (coached by Bevin Coggeshall) needs work. Mark D'Annunzio also switches accents skillfully from his sexy Scots Captain to the raunchy Canadian man in the bar. Kerry Young's Esther has authority and comic flare; her Scots accent lacks a Canadian twist but sounds authentic. Linda Loy's vulnerable sister Mary offers knowing hints of the girl still beneath the middle-aged woman. And Terry Browne's David, the older version of Mac's Captain Lavery, has a quiet control that anchors the concluding scenes.
The play's understated humanity has the same kind of good-natured appeal as the popular English comedy Jonathan Harvey's Beautiful Thing.
