Written by Iain Heggie 

Directed by Sam Hardie 

Review by Dominic Corr

Pitlochry Festival Theatre

Filial devotion goes to pot beneath the sterile neon of Iain Heggie’s provocatively titled comedy, Wiping My Mother’s Arse. Resurrected for Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s studio season by director Sam Hardie, this piece re-emerges as a bitingly dark sit-com dissecting family greed and institutional elder care. Modernised with references to podcasts and vapes, the narrative pits genuine compassion against avarice, and highlights the devastating stress the UK’s health and welfare system is under, though its structural joints occasionally creak under the strain of its updated framing.

Within this the central performances shine brightest, even when character logic falters. The relationship between a fading, escape-minded Andrene – played with exquisite wit and vulnerability by Anne Kidd – and her sharply humorous carer, brought to life by Johnny McKnight as Larry, Andrene’s care-assistant, forms the production’s emotional anchor. Yet the narrative rhythm hits a snag when estrange Andrene’s son (David Rankine) arrives from afar with a brash new partner (a gleeful and genuinely earnest, at points, Lisa Livingstone as Kath) in tow, eyeing his mother’s fortune to re-align his life choices. While the revelation that the carer and son share a secretive five-year romantic history fuels comedic subterfuge, the son’s sudden fixation on marrying a woman with whom he possesses zero romantic affinity feels jarringly hollow, rendering his underlying drivers inexplicably murky amidst the sharp dialogue. There’s a much tighter, and emotionally resonant story here, and we only get fleeting moments of it.

A crucial component in heightening this claustrophobic friction is Jenny Booth’s set design, which captures the cold, antiseptic reality of residential care with uncomfortable accuracy. An expansive wall dominates the space, a nice treat for the Studio space, where these deeply flawed figures navigate a labyrinth of doors of memory and manipulation. The clinical layout leaves no corner for escape, forcing the ensemble into an inescapable proximity that amplifies every biting insult and hidden agenda. However, this brilliant visual confinement serves to expose the play’s internal friction; the production struggles to smoothly bridge its breathless, filter-free farce with harrowing undercurrents of homophobia, past abuse, and alienation.

For all its sharp, bad-taste humour and masterful comic timing, the revival ultimately remains trapped between sit-com levity and bleak social commentary, never quite realising the raw, taboo-shattering potential. The production delivers plenty of genuine belly-laughs alongside its uncomfortable observations on the monetisation of human compassion, yet the abrupt tonal lurches prevent it from achieving total dramatic cohesion. What lingers is an undeniably fun, acrid, and troubling piece that cuts remarkably close to the bone.

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