EdFringe Review: The Shit Table

Being an enormous fan of Bad Sisters and The Young Offenders, both of which feature playwright Paul Howard on their writing teams, I wasn’t going to miss this Scottish premiere of The Sh*t Table. Well, what a treat it would prove; and what a marvellous example of right script, right theatre company in the shape of Don’t Think Twice Theatre Company. If any sensible TV or streaming execs pick this up, it would be a crime to recast.

---

Like all the best stories, Howard’s is based on a simple premise: four guests at a wedding reception find themselves relegated to the ‘sh*t’ table, furthest from the bridal party’s affections. Utterly unsuited to each other’s company, and each uniquely ‘themselves’, the gradually revealed reasons for their social damnation will power this hilarious production through to a gloriously calamitous end.

There’s Aiden (Byrne) — ‘AIDS’ to his ‘friends’ — would-be lad, and unwitting clown to the groom’s circle of friends. There’s Eugene (O’Regan) — overwrought mummy’s boy, hopelessly in love with the bride since they shared a bath as toddlers. There’s twitch-nosed Fran (Courtney) — a live-wire made livelier by regular trips to the bathroom — pretending to be the groom’s second cousin. Completing the quartet is Celeste (McCarthy), reluctant to explain her connection with either bride or groom, and armed with a deadly, dry sense of humour.

Superb Dialogue and Toxic Chemistry at The Sh*t Table

The dialogue is just superb; the first 20 minutes consistently made me laugh the hardest I have at this Fringe. Byrne’s deluded ‘broseph’ is an absolute hoot, whether declaiming ‘anti-woke’ chants with moronic joy, or recounting horrible stories of being bullied as if they are hilarious anecdotes of his time ‘with the boys’. O’Regan, meanwhile, gets the mentally fraying man-child bit just right, whilst Courtney’s super-charged millennial adds a touch of the unpredictable to each moment. However, the peachiest lines are reserved for McCarthy’s blonde-haired character assassin, and she never misses. Her ruthless dissections of her table-mates, particularly ‘AIDS’, are endlessly glorious; her conversational sh*thousery never gets dull. Bravo to director Byrne (obviously more competent than his alter-ego), for encouraging just the right energy and pace to make every line count.

There’s such a lively, toxic chemistry at the sh*t table; it really is only a matter of time before it foments calamity, which it duly does with pace and without a need for any of the quartet to step outside the characters established in the first few minutes.

Maybe Fran’s motivations for attending the wedding in disguise are excessively OTT, but other than this, The Sh*t Table escalates to a thoroughly satisfactory finale. Howard continues to demonstrate a knack for creating horribly flawed characters an audience can root for. How lucky Fringe audiences are that his script was handed over to just the right bunch of theatre makers. I’m sniggering just remembering some of the pitch-perfect moments liberally scattered through proceedings.

I think the highest compliment you can pay any show is to say you’d pay to see it again, and for The Sh*t Table, I would in a heartbeat. For those unable to catch it for its short run in Edinburgh, I hope there’s a sensible media exec in the room who can bring this to a screen near you, and that they are wise enough to leave the cast intact.

---

---