Writing believable drama about young people in a modern world withough resorting to interminal references to Facebook and iPhones is a rarity these days, which is why Scottish Sperm stands out amongst many similar shows for trying to tell an interesting story in a timeless fashion.
The play concerns Robert, a writer, who begins a relationship with Emma, a teacher, while befriending her photographer neighbour Sarah. The three cross paths in strange broken meetings and the story is played out as such, in small non-chronological scenes each giving up a fragment of pertinent story. Robert's quest to break his writer's block and pen a story about his part Scottish ancestry leads him to become more than friends with Sarah and her flatmate, ultimately leading to the dissolution of the friendships and the parting of ways for all.
While this would be an interesting but unremarkable tale if told conventionally, the play takes the opening of his novel and plays it as a recurring theme throughout, commenting on and centring the story despite its disparate scenes. This gives the audience a sense of the ethereality of the situation, and leaves them with much to ponder on once the final bows have been taken.