The humor is as broad as the Glaswegian accents in Cooking with Elvis, the revival of Lee (Billy Eliott) Hall's 1988 comedy at the Tron Theatre. Originally set in Newcastle Upon Tyne, Cooking has been transposed to Scotland by director Andy Arnold, who has also pumped up the action with outrageous and bawdy bits of comedy that might make even Benny Hill blush.
The setup is blackly comic. Dad (Gavin Mitchell) is an Elvis-loving surveyor who was turned into a paraplegic by a horrific car accident. Mum (Deidre Davis) is a blowsy schoolteacher who copes by swilling booze and having sex with her boytoy, Stuart (Martin Docherty). Caught between them is 15-year-old Jill (Jayd Johnson), who attempts to smother her raging emotional fires by whipping up - and consuming - vast amounts of food.
Continually called fat by her crudely contemptuous mother, Jill wreaks revenge by willing herself to fall in love with - and seduce - the hapless but horny Stuart. As the love triangle plays out with disastrous, but oft-hilarious, results, Dad's Elvis fantasies come to life. Decked out in glitzy costumes, shaking and shuggling his hips as he croons, preens and babbles like the King, Mitchell pretty much steals the show .
There's a point to all the craziness, the playwright would have us believe. His characters might be badly flawed, guilty of one kind of folly or another, but for all of that, life is still tolerable and even enjoyable at times.
