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Dining Room at Gilded Balloon Teviot
There’s something wonderful about a Play, A Pie and A Pint show turning up at the Fringe, because you know exactly what you’re getting: something small, something scrappy, something with real heart behind it. Sleeping Warrior’s Crocodile Rock ticks every one of those boxes and then some.
The story follows Steven, seventeen and stuck on the island of Cumbrae, watching his future get mapped out for him whether he likes it or not. Dad runs the pub, Dad expects Steven to run the pub, and that’s meant to be that. Then a flamboyant stranger wanders into his world and cracks it wide open, and suddenly there’s a bigger, shinier life on offer than the one he’d resigned himself to.
It’s a proper coming of age tale, and it earns every beat of it. The camp moments land with real warmth rather than just going for laughs, and there’s a lovely push and pull running through the whole thing: it’ll break your heart one minute and have it soaring the next as Steven starts to realise there might be another way to live. Darren Brownlie, playing Steven, gives a performance with real poignancy in among the glitter, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for whatever he does next.
This is what the Fringe is for. An amateur production, unpolished round the edges in exactly the way that makes it feel real, that leaves you with a story stuck in your head and the warm glow of having backed someone worth backing. Beautiful little show.