Reviews OWE & Fringe Published 6 February 2015

Big Sean, Mikey and Me

The Vaults ⋄ 4th-8th February 2015

A desperate picture of masculinity.

David Ralf

At the opposite end of the year from August, the Vault Festival this year feels like nothing so much as an Edinburgh venue in full swing, and the appearance of Ruaraidh Murray’s one-man show from the 2012 Fringe completes the effect. While set partly in London and developed and directed by Theatre 503’s Paul Robinson, Big Sean, Mikey and Me is Scottish through and through, and since 2012 Murray has toured Scotland, telling the stories of his childhood, his hero Mikey, and “the king Scotland never had”, Sean Connery himself.

Murray’s shaggy dog delivery is endearing and energetic, moving between Murray’s career as a struggling actor, letters and visits to Mikey in prison, childhood episodes at school and in the world of casual gangs and football firms of Edinburgh, and his funny exchanges with his self-confessedly terrible impression of Connery, who gives him ocshasional advishe, amid more frequent joshing.

The piece unassumingly reveals itself as a personal investigation of masculinity, with suave Connery’s wry interjections set against the friendship of Mikey and Ruaraidh, which develops through abortive street fights, trouble with the authorities, pub culture, gym culture, and their correspondence after Mikey is incarcerated. Because we don’t experience this in chronological order, and so many questions go unanswered – we know Mikey died in 2008 but we aren’t told the circumstances of his death, when or why he was convicted, or when he left prison – the narrative constantly frustrates a sense of causality. The piece is less argumentative than descriptive, although Murray does draw attention to the negative effect prison life had on Mikey’s lifestyle – “the drinking, the smoking, the drugs, he picked that up in prison”.

Murray tells us that his imagined relationship with Sean Connery is a theatrical device, but it stands alongside episodes where he does hear voices, where he references years lost to alcohol and coke, a long battle with mental illness, and a suicide attempt. It is a play which summons up a desperate picture of masculinity and with the wise-cracking Connery impression it renders the role models available to boys and men impotent – two-dimensional caricatures whose advice extends to suggesting anal sex. However the work doesn’t quite take ownership of its conclusions. Where it remains a personal homily, I wanted Murray to be angrier and more argumentative, and to draw attention to the systematic failures that led to the episodes of his and Mikey’s life that he describes. After seeing so many audiences, and meeting men and boys throughout Scotland, I suspect and hope that Murray and Robinson have more to share, and with a screenplay based on the play in development, they may have a chance to.

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David Ralf

David Ralf is a writer and critic in London. He won the Sunday Times Harold Hobson Award for reviewing at the ISDF in 2012, and the Kenneth Tynan Prize for his reviews for the Oxford Theatre Review in 2011. He draws pens and doodles at Pens by Pens.

Big Sean, Mikey and Me Show Info


Directed by Paul Robinson

Written by Ruaraidh Murray

Link http://vaultfestival.com/

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