Expensive Shit

Adura Onashile
Scottish Theatre Producers with Traverse Theatre Company
Traverse Theatre

Expensive Shit Credit: Dallis Murray

This hour-long play for a female quartet draws depressing feminist parallels between life in Nigeria and Scotland.

The connection between the two countries and cultures is Sabina Cameron’s Tolu, a toilet cleaner in a Glasgow nightclub who lives off tips.

Tolu tries to befriend the punters with differing results, the most receptive a sweet innocent played by Teri Ann Bobb Baxter.

Back in her homeland, Tolu and her three friends rehearse a dance routine to impress Ogre, an unseen pop star who is running his own freedom cult.

In both places, the young women are ripe for exploitation, advantage taken by those who seem to offer escape from bland lives that are going nowhere.

The playwright directs a good cast, led from the front by the excellent Sabina Cameron, in a nicely choreographed piece drawn on a small canvas but providing some powerful messages about gender politics and life’s inevitable disappointments.

Reviewer: Philip Fisher

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