Any play about alcoholics is setting itself a challenge. Drunks in themselves are not particularly interesting. ‘Booze talking’ is usually dull. The interest lies in how they got there or how they got out of there or the truths told under the influence. This offering, based on the novel of the same name by Canadian author and Booker nominee, Patrick deWitt, takes none of these lines, opting instead for a ramble through a struggle with addiction. The narrative structure, present continuous tense and second person, both gives and takes. So although the reminiscences are in the present, the central character / narrator takes the form of the slightly distancing, ‘you’: ‘You realize your wife is gone’, and so on.

Eoin Slattery as ‘You’, gives a convincing portrayal of the shuffling, slightly wobbly, shrugging cynic whose blurred life in the bottle is on the skids. Bar life for him is not the convivial world of Cheers or the Queen Vic, but a sad place populated by equally sad people and the odd grotesque. As a bartender he is his own prison warder. So although well acted the character had little in the way of redeeming features apart from an honest desire to tell his story.

The other characters, played by Fiona Mikel and Harry Humberstone, both of whom also sing and provide incidental music, written by musical director, Ben Osborn, pop in and out of his life and give some colour to the narrative. A long suffering wife, a therapist with a clumsy line in colonic irrigation and the curiously named, Peg Of My Heart, a hooker with a dislike for the polygamists of Salt Lake City are amongst the characters of the talented, Ms Mikel, who gives the impression she could tackle almost anything.

Harry Humberstone gets to lay down some pretty neat shapes on the dance floor and gives a good comic depiction of an animated cadaver as one of ‘You’s’ creepy bar room chums. He has a marvellous bass voice, which he uses sparingly to good effect both in his characters and his singing.

Bertrand Lesca’s direction manages to keep a grip on the episodic nature of the play and generates some kind of momentum towards what becomes clear quite early on as the inevitable outcome.

The production is one of the fruits of Bristol Ferment and comes back to the Old Vic studio as part of a national tour.  ★★★☆☆    Graham Wyles    19/03/15