Man’s Best Friend is Glasgow’s Best in Show
Twenty-five years ago, the Tron Theatre staged Our Bad Magnet, Douglas Maxwell’s first ever production at the venue. Since then, a lot has happened. Enough, apparently, for a sequel to Billy Joel’s ’80s hit We Didn’t Start the Fire to be warranted. Despite Fall Out Boy’s efforts, the critics savaged it, with many listing out significant events missed, with one in particular standing out: the COVID-19 pandemic.
Man’s Best Friend does not shy away from the pandemic. It is, in fact, a show borne out of, and framed by, the pandemic. It deals with it and the consequent lockdown head-on, unlike a large section of the mainstream culture which has seemingly moved on from it as if it was just an especially egregious episode of The Twilight Zone and not something that still affects the world every day in a million ways. In that sense, Man’s Best Friend is a brave show and a powerful one, exploring life and love, loneliness and alienation, and catharsis and community in its 80-minute runtime.
Written by Maxwell and helmed by the Tron’s new Artistic Director Jemima Levick, Man’s Best Friend has a very simple premise: a dogwalker who walks his neighbour’s dogs when, one day, the dogs make a run for it. In fact, this entire production is uncluttered: there is one actor playing one character dressed in one costume and he sometimes sits in the one chair in the centre of a neat but spare set, the only flourish coming when the dogs make their ephemeral, ethereal entrance.
The show is all the better for it, though. It is an intimate show in an intimate venue, and while, for example, it might be a delight for some if puppets or even actual dogs were used, it would undoubtedly distract and detract from what the show is trying to achieve.
With the focus so concentrated on the story, it is essential that the writing is strong, and it is strong, though a little obvious in both form and content. It is even more essential that the (only) actor on stage telling that story is up to it, and Jordan Young, playing Ronnie, delivers a remarkable performance full of humour and wit, and heart and pathos.
Ronnie is your everyman, Scottish to his core, and Young embodies that from the way he regales his tale as if you were a friend he was having a pint with to the way his grief constantly peeks out until he finally has to confront it in a raw moment of truth and vulnerability. Young is wholly convincing because he throws all his weight into the moment whether it is comedic or tragic, or both at the same time. When he contorts and strains his body to wrestle with thin air, you buy the image of him holding back an armada of rowdy dogs despite there being no props to help him sell it. In a quiet moment later on, you again cannot glance away from Young despite the fact he is just sitting there talking because of the haunted look in his eyes and the way his voice trembles as he keeps from breaking down entirely.
Man’s Best Friend is not a sad story. It is sad – but it is also funny, introspective, and moving. It is a story about something significant we went through together, and it is important we do not forget that something. But it is also a story about how we came out the other side, and it is equally important we do not forget that we are, as Ronnie says, ‘here now.’