There’s something deeply moving about the simplicity of Mamoru Iriguchi’s set design which accentuates the tenderness of James Ley’s beautiful love song to not only Lavender Menace (Edinburgh’s first gay bookshop operated by Bob Orr and Sigrid Neilson in the early 80s), but also the emerging gay scene of the time and Auld Reekie itself whose one o’clock gun can, to quote a respectable married man with a penchant for cock, “make you shit yourself if you’ve got a guilty conscience.”

Black bookcases pierced by spines of brilliant white – like the “all / ups and acrosses” of Norman MacCaig’s Hotel Room, 12th Floor – illuminate the darkness of Thatcherite and Presbyterian-fuelled homophobia. Spines of brilliant white which offer a beacon of hope towards which gay men and women flock, like moths to a flame. Though perhaps bears to Fire Island (a former gay club on Princes Street which ran regular wet Y-front competitions) would be more fitting.

Throughout the course of the two 45-minute acts, as the loquacious Lewis (Pierce Reid) and his fellow bookseller goofy Glen (Matthew McVarish) swap tales of the city as they prepare to shut up shop for the very last time, one by one the spines of brilliant white fade to black, like gone but not forgotten “slices of life”. Gay life. Gay history. People and places, secrets and scandals, love and sadly loss. The latter epitomized by Waterstones, which not only took over Fire Island, but whose dry orderliness stands in stark contrast to the radical vibrancy of Lavendar Menace.

Pierce Reid and Matthew McVarish bounce off one another – literally and artistically – to a tee. A tee hee. Both taking turns to play the straight feed to the gay bigmouth as they reenact a “homage” to Bob Orr and Sigrid Neilson as well as a potted history of their friendship and the scene. From “Lothian’s finest” cop who belatedly self-identifies as a “hungry bottom” to Edinburgh’s proudest pupil who boldly presents his homophobic teacher with a book on anal pleasure, there is a sweet playfulness to their interactions which is incredibly endearing. All of which is underpinned by James Ley’s script – first performed almost two years to the day in The Lyceum Studio – which is an intelligent and poignant hoot.

Peter Callaghan
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