It’s early 2023 and the cost of living crisis is biting hard. Daniel (Ciaran Stewart) lives in a grubby flat, kips in a sleeping bag on the couch, and tries to keep his head above the turbulent waters. Mostly for the sake of Belle, his 7 year old, who lives with her mum most of the time.
While he’s out the flat is broken into by Malc (Ben Ewing) and Susanne (Beth Marshall), who quickly reveal themselves to be, not burglars (because what is there to steal?), but a debt collector and electrical engineer respectively. They’ve come because Daniel owes a four figure debt to the power company. Malc just wants to get on with it, but Susanne, new to the job, thinks that maybe they’re being unnecessarily harsh. And when Daniel comes home to find them in his flat, trouble breaks out.
Set against the metaphor of the 3 Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf, the script looks to portray just how hard life, and the System, is for people having to live on the margins. The script is more hammer than scalpel, but it gets the point over clearly. And, unfortunately, what’s not exactly the greatest dialogue ever written is not helped by some weakness in the performances. Marshall stands out as the one who really delivers, and Susanne is the most believable of the trio, filled with a confusing mix of compassion, guilt, and her own needs. Stewart is rarely credible, despite having the most emotional meat to work with. While Ewing spans the middle ground, certainly coming over as unlikeable, but not quite credible as the hard man.
It’s a bleak subject, and there are a few decent laughs to relieve the gloom, but overall this was one of the weaker additions to the PPP canon.
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