You Talkin’ To Us?
★★★☆☆ Expletives not deleted
theSpace on the Mile (Venue 39): Fri 7 – Sat 15 Aug 2026
Review by Tom Ralphs
Authentically False Productions return with Daniel Sanchez O’Brien’s You Talkin’ To Us? a play that delivers on the promises on its flyers, but falls short in several other respects and fails to deliver on its early promise.
When a flyer for a show proclaims ‘It’s a f*cking comedy’ it’s as clear a cue as you can get that it comes with a lot of strong language. On that count alone, You Talkin’ To Us? – about a group of gangsters looking to unionise against their tyrannical boss – undoubtedly delivers. Elsewhere, not always as much.
Kirsty MacVicar with Liam Scobie, Callum Latham, Arran Hogg and Daniel John Doherty. Pic Authentically False Productions.
You Talkin’ To Us? opens with Mitchell and Bart, two incompetent balaclava-clad villains, played by Arran Hogg and Liam Scobie, breaking into a house only to be surprised by the owner (Kirsty MacVicar).
It’s a superb scene, brilliantly scripted by O’Brien, who demonstrates the ability to find all the potential moments of comedic absurdity and exploit them while still progressing a storyline.
Hogg and Scobie bounce off each other very effectively, as the smartly dressed Mitchell clashes with his scruffy counterpart before being interrupted by MacVicar’s homeowner, who delivers a great mixture of withering put downs and enraged aggression.
It all ends with one of two fight scenes that are carefully and very effectively choreographed by fight coordinator Luke Davison.
Such a strong opening raises expectation levels for the rest of the play. Expectations which initially seem to be justified when co-director Callum Latham as Murray, the third of the three lackeys, gives a superbly geeky performance, with a phone call that again shows O’Brien’s strength as a writer.
increasingly frantic
From here however, the play fails to deliver. The main storyline of the men and their immediate boss Mike, played by Daniel John Doherty, enlisting the help of an out of work lawyer, (MacVicar again), in order to deal with the unreasonable demands of an unseen overlord, is delivered in a confused and increasingly frantic style. There are too many ideas and too little structure.
The clever observations in the early dialogue are lost – and replaced with a default use of expletives that becomes increasingly annoying as it drowns out any chance of characters showing anything other than aggression towards each other.
This leaves Doherty, as Mike, with the least chance to show his versatility as an actor, although he does manage to get the most out of the comedy that results from him needing to don a very different balaclava from his fellow gangsters.
Lukas Fury, the LFX and SFX technician works with the script and co-directors Latham and Kirsty Morrison to heighten the moments of real action and elevate them above the personality clashes and arguments that increasingly dominate the play. But the whole thing ends up feeling like a great idea that needed a lot more thought to realise its full potential.
Running time: 50 minutes (no interval).
theSpace on the Mile (Space 1), 80 High Street EH1 1TH (Venue 39).
Fri 7 – Sat 15 August 2026.
Daily: 6.45pm.
Tickets and details: Book here at EdFringe.com.
Tickets direct from venue: Book here.
Authentically False Facebook: @AuthenticallyFalseProductions
Instagram: @authenticallyfalse
Linktree: @authentically_false.
ENDS
