I, Tommy

Tommy Sheridan is arguably the most complex, engaging, and ultimately flawed politician of his generation. A firebrand orator, he swept to prominence during the poll-tax protests, briefly made the Scottish Socialist Party the most successful Trotskyist movement in Western Europe, before immolating his, and the SSP’s, political future when he sued The News of the World for defamation after the paper alleged he had visited swingers’ clubs.

Sheridan won his court case but was subsequently convicted of perjury, in 2010. SSP members testified against Sheridan in both cases, engendering a split that destroyed both the party and its former leader.

A charismatic teetotaller who rose from nothing to become a national leader then risked his career—and lost—in a fit of hubris: Sheridan’s tale is, as the title hints, one of Roman proportions. Unfortunately, writer Ian Pattison’s Tommy is one of the shallowest, most one-dimensional caricatures you are likely to see this Fringe.

Pattison, creator of Glaswegian anti-hero Rab C Nesbitt, strips Sheridan of all complexity, reducing him to a shallow womaniser with an oompa loompa tan and a bathetic turn of phrase. The supporting characters, Sheridan’s mother Alice and his wife Gail, are empty ciphers of Glasgow Catholicism, while Alan McCombes, Sherdian’s erstwhile SSP colleague and author of the book from which I, Tommy is largely drawn, is limp and ineffectual.

Des McLean and Colin McCredie, as Sheridan and McCombes respectively, try gamely but are let down by a flabby script. The laughs, when they come, are cheap, easy and quickly forgotten. Like its protagonist, a wasted opportunity.