frankie abbott: deluded yob *****

With a running time of 40 minutes, David Barry's bittersweet comedy 'A Day in the Lives of Frankie Abbott' is perfect for anyone aiming to sample as much of Edinburgh's eclectic Fringe Festival as possible during its annual run. I can just recall 'Please Sir', the TV series that ran from 1968 until 1972, starring John Alderton as a novice teacher posted to Fenn Street, a 'tough' inner-London school. David Barry's Frankie Abbott was a key character, a misfit who assumed the quickest way to impress his male peers and the females he lusted after was to tell tales. Lots of tall, embellished tales. But for all his bluster he was really a soft-centred mummy's boy, the boorish threats merely a front.

Abbott comes across as the curmudgeonly drunk in your local whose absurdities are more entertaining than the guy explaining what happened in the office that day

Barry's story has imagined Abbott as having grown up with the rest of us. Now into his 60s, we are introduced to the white-haired version of 'FA' as he frequently refers to himself in the third person. Still clad in a leather jacket and sporting a teenaged Marvel Comics t-shirt, he remains fixated with spouting nonsense about special operations undertaken while fighting against the Viet Cong, or the time he tackled the Krays.  Abbott's preposterous stories are always delivered with a twinkle in the eye and for all his grandiose threats (such as describing poking lighted matches under his sister's fingernails), the fact he is living in a fantasy world negates any sense of his behavior actually being sinister. He comes across as the curmudgeonly drunk in your local whose absurdities are more entertaining than the guy explaining what happened in the office that day.

Barry skilfully allows us to get drawn in to Abbott's eternally chipper self, while subtly underscoring a terrible reality that will face one in six of us fortunate enough to live into our 80s.

This, though, is the true tragedy behind the lies.  Abbott's teenage fantasies describe the world where he has become hopelessly trapped as an adult.  As the drama unfolds it is quickly made clear that he is living in a care home.  As is typical with dementia's cruel onset, the past can become crystal-clear. Abbott recalls actual childhood incidents with clarity but has no idea about what happened that morning. He believes his long-dead mother will come to take him away from this 'home' he cannot recognise.

Barry skilfully allows us to get drawn in to Abbott's eternally chipper self, while subtly underscoring a terrible reality that will face one in six of us fortunate enough to live into our 80s.

His chief carer is his nurse, Marion (Anita Graham - herself a regular fixture of 70s TV, in shows like Within These Walls, Morecambe and Wise and Terry and June.) A perfectly understated counterbalance to Abbott's ranting, her only gripe is taking issue at being continually referred to as "dollface" by the onetime Fenn Street wannabe yobbo. 

​Short but memorable.

'A Day in the Life of Frankie Abbott' runs at the New Town Theatre until August 18.

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