Words: Rosie Hall
Photo Credit: Ray Kelly

4 stars

PALS is a one-act play from Scottish female-led theatre company Higgledly Piggledy Productions, returning after a successful first Fringe run in 2024. It tells the story of a group of four friends who, feeling frazzled, overworked, and slightly lost in life, decide to embark on a camping trip up Ben Lomond. Chaos and capers ensue. We get to know the four friends Sadie, Claire, Taylor and Flo as distinct, considered and lively characters, each with their own insecurities and struggles. The cast (Olivia McIntosh, Olivia Caw, Amy Glass and Shelley Middler) have a clear chemistry and it is this, more than anything, that allows the writing to fizz and sparkle.

The main heft of the play is interspersed with Sadie’s direct addresses to the audience, filling us in on her emotional journey as her and her friends embark on their physical one. Humour is adeptly blended with more serious, emotionally fraught moments, and one is often followed immediately by the other. At no point did this feel jarring or inappropriate, though: instead, it felt entirely realistic for a depiction of tight-knit female friendship.

Quite a lot of the play’s charm is derived from the friends’ chaotic dynamic, but this sometimes feels a little overdone, meaning the line delivery lacked the nuance that the text itself seemed to require. The performers shouting reached a fever pitch perhaps one too many times and this made the scene, and thus the mood of the situation, a little hard to connect with. But hey, I would be yelling too if I was trying to pitch a two-man tent in Gilded Balloon’s Patter Hoose. PALS is a play with a lot of heart, that manages to pack a lot of love and life lessons into a tight 70 minutes. 

PALS
Gilded Balloon Patter House – Doonstairs
19:00
30th July – 12th August