EdFringe Review: After Party

Set in a near-future Scotland where assisted dying is legal, Morna Young’s After Party taps into a rich British tradition of dark-edged domestic comedy. Fading stage star Vivienne Blackwood has decided to bow out on her 80th birthday. With the ‘death doctor’ booked for tomorrow morning, she gathers her family for a final blowout. The snag? None of them knows why they have been summoned.

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If Vivienne imagines her impending exit will bring her fractured clan together, our self-doomed heroine soon discovers her folly.

Director Katie Posner demonstrates a keen instinct for comedy and grief alike within Richard Kent’s abstracted Highland set. Unafraid of weighty cultural touchstones, the production features an unmistakable nod to Da Vinci’s The Last Supper—though Jesus, it is safe to say, enjoyed a far more quiescent meal. Crucially, for a play orbiting a dying octogenarian, the action never settles into static, melancholic senescence. It remains full of people in motion, driven by sharp, lively dialogue that weaves Shakespearean verse into modern family arguments without stalling the tempo.

Alison Peebles leads with magnificent bite as Vivienne: glorious, flawed, and obsessed with the Bard to the bitter end. The devil in her cannot resist one last provocative performance, even if it risks pushing her children further apart. Opposite her, Liz Kettle is quietly majestic as carer Carol. Both writing and direction illustrate their bond with light strokes, handling the relationship with care, and making it the most mature on stage.

The arrival of ex-husband Bill (a shabby but charismatic Benny Young) further demonstrates the playwright’s confidence in playing dramatic wildcards. Far from the ally daughter Lily expects, the ageing film star enters as neither hero nor villain, but a man seeking uncertain redemption before time runs out.

Farce, flaws, and family friction

Rachel Dick delivers gentler comic relief as influencer granddaughter Sasha, an almost Shakespearean fool prone to unlooked-for wisdom. Elsewhere, characterisations feel a tad less balanced. Gilly Gilchrist makes son Geoff convincingly insufferable, resolutely blind to his own stubbornness. Yet Hilary Maclean’s devout Lily is saddled with a simplistic, bible-bashing mindset that lacks human nuance, despite Maclean’s best efforts to reveal the damaged woman beneath the religious shield. When she shies away from an invitation to nurse her mother through to a natural death, for example, it feels more narratively convenient than true to character.

Meanwhile, Angus Yellowlees’ spineless grandson James behaves like a pathetic adolescent for reasons never adequately explained—neither his gran nor his church-bound mother lacks backbone. And, despite ample stage presence, Indie musician Ruby Glyne’s Cass might provide an invaluable outsider’s perspective; she has little else to do than be the coolest person in the room. Their romantic pairing initially beggared my belief, though Mrs QR was swift to point to the often bizarrely mismatched couples populating modern dating shows (suggesting, perhaps, that I am merely showing my age).

Yet if these seem like rather wide-ranging criticisms, in truth the quality of writing and sure-handed direction means After Party remains captivating to the end. Posner injects momentum that easily carries proceedings through the thinner moments—culminating in a terminal scene handled with genuine sophistication, neither stripped of the weight such a moment holds nor abnormally po-faced. (I did consider whether this was a ‘spoiler’, but the play sets course early doors.)

There will be no abrupt enlightenment for either patient or her loved ones, but nobody comes away unchanged in some respect. After Party avoids sentimental closures, leaving room for messiness and resolution in equal measure in an ambitious, frequently hilarious exploration of choice and grief.

Featured Image: After Party by Morna Young (credit – Marc Brenner)

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