How Late It Was, How Late by Rude Mechanicals September 27, 2003

Adapted from the Booker Prize winning novel by James Kelman and told in the utterly uncensored vernacular of the Scottish working class, HOW LATE IT WAS, HOW LATE is the rhythmic, profane, and gut-wrenching story of a fist-fighting, alcoholic, ex-con named Sammy. Beaten senseless and blinded by the Glasgow police, Sammy is plunged into a Kafkaesque nightmare in which his girlfriend has disappeared and the police are after him for unspecified crimes. Carrying a sawed-off mop for a blind man's cane, Sammy brings frantic, foul-mouthed illumination to his dark world where his immediate needs for food, shelter and safety do not destroy his ultimate dream: to escape Scotland to a Texas paradise conjured in his imagination from country western songs. The Rudes explode this 400 page novel into an hour and a half of physical, multi-media theatre in which projections and live feed provide the audience a visceral initiation into Sammy?s experience, from the boredom of the hospital room to the menace of the police interrogation. The parallels between the politics of Sammy?s story and contemporary America under the Patriot Act resonate loudly in this gritty and vitriolic celebration of that part of the human spirit that is fueled by piss and vinegar.

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