Review: Barflies, Barony Bar

Written for Culture Wars

Step into the oaky musk of the Barony Bar, where Grid Iron serve up their latest site-sympathetic offering, and you’ll see drinking establishments for what they really are: wombs into which we regress.

The air droops with a smell familiar and comfortable, yet stale and bodily. The glare of natural light is supplanted by a heavy, warm glow. It’s as if the air is padding, ready to catch you when you stumble: an atmosphere like symbiotic fluid that incubates but stagnates, inside of which we mewl and puke, babble and flail.

Inspired by the writings of Charles Bukowski, Barflies pays homage to the bar and its soothing powers of inspiration. Yet the skill of Ben Harrison’s production is to damn even as it glorifies. Its inhabitants seem at once the romanticised bums of American lore and the rancid arseholes of Scottish life. Yes, they are free, but in a toy world devoid of daily responsibilities. Their inspirations need no confirmation from beyond its bounds; their behaviour need not subscribe.

Barflies tumbles through the blurred loves and lusts of Henry Chinaski, an unearthed writer whose barstool doubles as his office. Through the saloon doors stagger a bedraggled array of women, each of whom drifts slowly into his arms. There’s the manic, infectious Cass; the haughty, expressionless Margerie and Sarah – a sober literary agent responsible for Chinaski’s discovery. As she literally beats him into shape, Sarah becomes a witch in Henry’s writing, shrinking him down to six inches and finally – in a glorious moment of simple stagecraft – using him as a sex toy.

Harrison coaxes fine performances from his cast. Keith Fleming – last seen as a perma-pissed Peer Gynt – cements his position as Scotland’s premier portrayer of alcoholics. His Henry seems to have grown around the bar like ivy, typewriter and Bud always within easy reach. In him is a vintage blend of gentleness and fire that lurks under an infantile passivity, as he is led one way and another by booze and birds. Alongside him, Gail Watson seems a one-women harem of hazy alcoholics, each utterly distinguishable, keenly observed and superbly executed.

Visceral, intelligent and always engaging, Barflies finds life and soul in the dregs of society. It is time at the bar very well spent.