As bright, cheerful and well-meaning as one of those issues-based picturebooks designed to educate children about misunderstood minority groups, laying into The Singer feels like the critical equivalent of that bit in The Odyssey when the guy throws the puppy off the cliff. Nonetheless…
Written and directed by Cora Bissett with songs by KT Tunstall, it follows Andy (Dylan Wood), a feckless one-hit wonder singer-songwriter now reduced to gigging in Glasgow pubs. But then, after a particularly shitty gig, he meets Joe (Jamie Rea, who co-wrote the short Bissett film the play is based upon). A saintly deaf guy, he lets Andy crash at his flat, whereupon the guest discovers that his host has a notebook full of killer lyrics and a laptop full of sick beats. The two tentatively start a collaboration – but as soon as Andy gets his commercial mojo back, perfidious record industry types start trying to rip them apart.
The Singer preaches a strongly inclusive message about the deaf community, both in terms of their being marginalised and undervalued generally, but also specifically regarding the fact that they absolutely appreciate and indeed write music – something Andy is initially bemused by. It is a deeply good-hearted play. My issue with it is that – accepting some swears – it feels like it was written for an audience of five-year-olds. Bissett has made some good stuff in the past, but it usually comes saddled with an improving message and here the message has simply overridden the rest of the plot to the point of infantilisation.
Joe is an unsullied savant, a figure of towering musical and lyrical genius and total moral purity who has no failings or flaws. This, I might argue, is a fairly patronising way of looking at a disabled group: why can’t he be messily human too? His biggest failing is being so saintly that he doesn’t seem particularly bothered that Andy has stiffed him on a lucrative songwriting credit.
It also revolves around a completely insane depiction of the music industry and builds to a climax so unbelievable that the only way I could really rationalise it was by imagining it as a pointedly utopian vision of a world we can only dream exists.
The Tunstall-wrought songs are decent (even Andy’s supposedly bad solo compositions) and Hannah Jarrett-Scott and Petre Dobre’s brightly-dressed presences as the show’s narrators and supporting cast give The Singer a sort of vaguely magical realist loopiness that goes some way to cutting through the earnestness. But honestly this is some of the crudest, most childish storytelling I’ve ever come across in a play aimed at adults. Both leads are crudely drawn and in putting Joe on such an absurdly high platform it sells him short. That’s not to deny there’s value in giving a deaf performer a leading stage role. But did it have to be this one?