In Scotland in the 90s, Johnno McCreadie wants to attend his first real rave, but instead finds himself in an act of political rebellion.
Johnno McCreadie, fifteen-years-old, a resident of the small Scottish town of Livingstone, wants to experience a rave. As a result of the 1994 Criminal Justice Act, these raves have been deemed illegal. Unable to outright proclaim young people gathering in a field to be a punishable crime, the raves were judged antisocial behaviour, specifically if characterized by music that contains ‘the emission of a succession of repetitive beats.’
Thus, these raves acquired a mysterious, underground status. Luckily, Johnno’s best mate Spanner and his friend from somewhere in the South of England are worldly enough to be in-the-know. One night, dodging past his worried mother, he hops into the car with Spanner and his English friend, and heads to his first real rave. Happening concurrently, disillusioned cop Robert Dunlop, gets ready for his night shift, where he hears that the night’s mission will be shutting down an illegal party.
The play interchanges between scenes with deft speed, allowing the audience to observe the characters’ experiences as they progress throughout the night. Ned Campbell does a phenomenal job in this challenging one-man play. Over the course of the sixty-minute production, he switches between various characters within the same scene by the line, as well as suddenly turning to another character in a completely different scene, happening somewhere else in Livingstone that same evening. One moment, he is Johnno’s worried mother, ironing clothes, trying to distract herself from her worry and anger towards her son, whom she suspects lurched out of the house to attend an illegal rave. The next moment, Campbell is playing three different characters in the same scene, chatting on the way to the rave. The very next moment, he is Robert Dunlop, preparing for the night’s shift. Campbell allows playwright Kieran Hurley’s dialogue to do the work for him, signalling a change in character through subtle vocal and postural adjustments. It was surprisingly easy to track who each character was, despite Campbell’s impressive pace.
The performance was remarkably enhanced by the lighting design of Alex Lewer, and the music of Tom Snell, the live DJ sharing Campbell’s stage. In addition to Ned Campbell’s stirring physicality, the sound and lighting design came together to make Johnno’s first experience taking illicit substances at a rave strikingly accurate. The atmosphere of an underground party was palpable. It felt as though we as the audience were there with Johnno, in the tent, in a field, surrounded by young people who probably just wanted to have fun, but instead found themselves in an act of political rebellion. Beats reminds us that our civil liberties are ours to protect, something each generation inevitably discovers for themselves.