ScotsGay Magazine

***

This is a kind of richly comic, 200 year latebook launch. Miles Jupp as Boswell offers some audience members copies of his and Johnson’s book in a new paperback edition. There is much pipe-playing and we all sing the Skye Boat Song - well, what better than a dose of romantic Catholic monarchism on a boozy Saturday night. Simon Munnery as Johnson is deeply insulting to Scots and Scotland, much to the delight of the Edinburgh audience. His stage presence and timing are immaculate. He has some of the most hypnotic eyes in the business. It’s all jolly fun, and the two characters are vividly presented. There’s a “Gillie’s Buckets” sequence that seemed rather rubbish to me at the front; I don’t know what those at the back made of it. It’s headlined “Iain Gillie presents” and is devised by Stewart Lee. It’s a very enjoyable end to the theatrical evening, but I would fear for the material in the hands of actors any less highly talented.

Tony Challis

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