Big Sean, Mikey and Me

"This is the Edinburgh that doesn’t exist in the tourist guides," Edinburgh-born writer and performer Ruaraidh Murray says towards the end of his debut play. Murray’s Edinburgh, however, would be familiar to anyone who has read Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting -– it’s a city populated by teenage gangs, hard drugs, belly laughs and, ultimately, anomie.

We meet Murray, an out-of-work actor in London, trying to piece his life together with the help of the titular Big Sean (Murray’s imaginary friend Sean Connery) and his rough and ready childhood pal, Mikey Anderson ("the last of the Jacobite rebels"). He’s 36—the best years of his life lost to cocaine—and reduced to auditioning for deodorant commercials. Like Trainspotting’s Mark Renton, Murray is choosing life, or at least trying to; he’s swapped the pub for the gym, wants to settle down, start afresh.    

Murray is an infectious and energetic actor and the audience visibly warms to him. But for all the poignancy of his highly personal story—we see photos of his schoolboy football team, letters from Mikey, who has since died—the pacing is, at times, too frenetic, the switching between the three characters often confuses, and the script is under-written in places.

A wonderful scene about being lifted by the police at 13 shows what Murray is capable of when he ditches the Sean Connery impersonations and shouty delivery and focuses on a single story, well-told. I’d wager there is a fine play in Murray, but sadly Big Sean, Mikey and Me isn’t it.