Review: Maybe Tomorrow, Traverse Theatre – A Play, A Pie & A Pint 2025

Washed up in a tired and soon-to-close seaside revue, ageing actress Sian Silver reflects on her showbiz life, its highs, lows and unrealised ambitions as she faces an uncertain future. So writes Lindsay McMurdo for theQR.co.uk…

This is the simple premise for Maybe Tomorrow, created by Hannah Jarrett-Scott (book) and Brian James Sullivan (music and lyrics), directed by Lesley Hart and the latest of this season’s A Play, A Pie and A Pint series at the Traverse.

Silver has known some success in earlier years when in a personal and management relationship with theatre producer Ryan who promised her stardom and a family but instead exploited her and then ran off with another man. And Silver is still haunted by her early failure to secure the role of Annie in the eponymous musical, a role she felt born to play.

And Silver is still haunted by her early failure to secure the role of Annie in the eponymous musical, a role she felt born to play.

Her back story is filled in through the half a dozen or so songs that pepper the play, each in a distinctive musical theatre genre and all of them tuneful and wittily written to supply the details of Silver’s life without slowing the forward momentum of the piece.

Silver is played by Liz Ewing, herself a veteran of many a musical (though a long way short of Silver’s supposed age!) as well as numerous other hit shows both on stage and TV. She delivers a performance of enormous range and complexity, whether expertly hamming it up in showgirl mode, defiantly railing against the injustices of the business she loves or tenderly conveying the hurt and longing at the core of Silver’s persona.

Ewing is very ably supported by Julia Murray playing multiple other characters (and pulling off some lightning costume changes) including the theatre manager, a creepy superfan, Silver’s dastardly nemesis Ryan and, movingly, Silver in her younger, more hopeful days who appears to talk to her older self at various points in the piece.

Dialogue throughout the piece is naturalistic (there’s no luvvie or stagey language here) and shot through with a great deal of humour which lightens the mood without trivialising the down-beat overall premise, a balancing act not easily achieved.

Dialogue throughout the piece is naturalistic … a balancing act not easily achieved.

The reappearance of Ryan in Silver’s life seems a little schematic and improbable. However, it prompts her to attempt stardom one last time with a bizarre portrayal of Annie, but played as the older woman she has become. Ewing’s delivery of “Tomorrow” in this mode was the emotional highlight of the piece, both touching and desperate.

Her attempt fails, of course. But it does provide Silver with a kind of final catharsis and the plays ends on a note of fragile but defiant optimism, delivered by both older and younger Silvers in a beautiful duet.

Featured Image: MAYBE TOMORROW Play Pie Pint credit Tommy Ga-Ken Wan