Cross border comedy: Big in Scotland

Big in Scotland

at the North Wall Oxford

on Friday, October 13

Review by JON LEWIS

Oxford University educated Yorkshire stand-up comedian Kieran Hodgson’s observational solo show Big in Scotland is about Hodgson’s quest to turn himself from being a ‘bad’ Englishman into a ‘good’ Scotsman.

There are two reasons why. First, as a best man to his closest friend, a barrister, he feels embarrassed by his speech that contained too many historical facts. He regrets not telling him he loved him. Secondly, he has moved from Wood Green in London to Glasgow to take on the role of Gordon, a Yorkshireman, in the long-running sitcom Two Doors Down. He feels culturally out of the moment he arrives at the studios and talks politics to his new colleagues.

In his previous production about Brexit, ’75, which toured to the North Wall in 2019, Hodgson had just got engaged to his now husband. He creates some hilarious routines involving his partner who refused him permission to identify him via his accent. Accordingly, while replaying their conversations on stage, Hodgson resorts to the accents used by actors who voice the words of terrorists on the BBC news. However, the husband is only one of many characters in Hodgson’s narrative.

Hodgson is hilarious imitating the mannerisms and voice of his co-star and national treasure Elaine C Smith, who becomes the standard-bearer for Scottish politics in the story. He imitates the UK’s Scottish Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who attended a performance of ’75, praising Hodgson for ‘so many accents and the story running all the way through’. It’s the same with Big in Scotland, as Hodgson takes on the personality of a first assistant director with an impenetrable Glaswegian accent, a nationalist from South Uist, the retired actor Harry Lauder who works as a barista and a bigoted café owner in Tyndrum.

Wearing a tartan jacket, Hodgson is ridiculing nationalisms large and small in the UK. He’s having his cake and eating it while casting himself as some kind of bigot one moment, then a self-depreciating liberal the next. It’s all plotted to the nth degree, including the obligatory moments of audience involvement.

A fun hour in good company.