South Bend
Platform, Gilded Balloon and tour
7th July-22nd September 2018
Grid Iron’s 2017 Fringe offering was Martin McCormick’s autobiographical play, reflecting on a disastrous relationship he had with an American woman when he was a student. South Bend muses on our obsession with US culture, and the love-hate relationship we have with them, and they with us.
Performed by Martin and the incredible Jess Chanliau who played 25 different characters, including America herself, South Bend was underscored by the live foley of David Pollock, who also played the nagging voice of doubt inside Martin’s mind.
In 2006 Martin McCormick flew across the Atlantic to be reunited with a woman he had fallen passionately in love with, a California Girl. But she’s changed. Completely. She’s in Indiana now, not California. With her step-mum who hates the British. Almost as soon as he’s arrived he’s on the road again, penniless and desperate to get home to Scotland.
South Bend is a tale of hope, of love, of a small country and a vast one, of a good Samaritan and a relationship gone bad.