Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour was one of the big hits on the Fringe that I missed.  It's now on tour and I caught up with it in Kirkcaldy.

It's a simple tale of a group of convent schoolgirls down from Oban to the big smoke of Auld Reekie to take part in a choir competition.  In the time they have free before the gig they cast off such inhibitions as they may have had (though it doesn't seem they had many) along with their school uniforms and go on a bender.

I recently read an article about the teenage brain that says amongst other things "What is clear, however, is that it is absolutely essential to al1ow adolescents to make mistakes, and to allow them to do so in a safe environment which enables them to get things wrong and learn." 

Drink, drugs and dangerous liaisons; these girls make mistakes all right.  Nobody dies so I suppose the environment of bars, nightclubs and dodgy flats in which the action takes place might just qualify as safe.  But have they learnt anything by the end?  I'm not sure, but it didn't seem to me that they were now set on a life of hard work and ladylike speech.  (The language is astonishingly filthy throughout.)

It's a high octane production whose cast of six perform with great energy and commitment.  They are superb in their ability to switch character in a trice with a change of voice, of posture or manner.  We are never in any doubt as to who they are at any point and there are many switches.  It's not a cast of thousands but the six actors do have to play quite a few parts.  And they have to sing.  They are a choir after all.  They sing a capella in serious choir mode but there is an excellent little band of three for the letting down of hair moments and the pop music soundtrack.

I admired every aspect of the production: staging, lighting, music, performance and pyrotechnics but I think I'm too old or too insensitive to find an adolescent coming of age story quite as thrilling as the critics did.