While Dessie’s up-and-coming skiffle band The Crescents is ambushed by serpentine music promoter Eddie Steeples (Santino Smith in hugely slippery form), the talented, 10-piece cast of actor-musicians treat us to a series of brilliantly performed songs from that period. From The Everly Brothers’ Crying in the rain until I’ve loved you too long by Otis Redding, the gloriously nostalgic jukebox score (composed by Byrne, music director Hilary Brooks, and director Andy Arnold) is brilliantly woven into the story.
Marc McMillan’s fine-tuned guitar-playing Dessie and Julia Murray’s fantastically sung saxophonist Donna are typical of a remarkably capable ensemble. Simon Donaldson’s hilarious, stubborn enforcer Frankie and Harry Ward’s irascible local businessman Mr Fazzi also shine.
The story that unfolds captures the vitality of youth fueled by the post-World War II optimism. It is also interrupted by death, loss, regret and violence.
Whether it’s the hilarious, foul-mouthed, chain-smoking priest Father Durcan or Dani Heron’s hairdresser and singer Maureen (whose jealous antipathy towards Donna is as humorous as her striking crush on Dessie), comic writing is an absolute joy. Few playwrights (Quebec’s master playwright Michel Tremblay aside) share Byrne’s extraordinary ability to make an audience laugh almost constantly at a play involving four deaths, violent gangsterism, and religious bigotry.
The drama is played out on designer Becky Minto’s impossibly versatile scaffolding set (evocative of the gray tenements, greasy spoon cafes and all-important hair salons of Byrne’s proletarian Paisley). The design is brilliantly evocative of both the comforting sense of community and the truly sinister edge of the place.
Inevitably, the production will be graced with beautiful costumes designed by Byrne and Minto, which vividly recall the writer’s American-influenced, style-conscious childhood. Particularly memorable are the electric blue teddy boy jacket and matching brothel crawler shoes Dessie wore in the first act.
It’s been 16 years since Byrne wrote Underwood Lane. As Arnold’s perfectly tuned, bittersweet premiere proves, it is a classic of the writer’s remarkable dramatic body of work.
At Tron Theatre, Glasgow until July 30. Tickets: 0141 552 4267; tron.co.uk