THE strange, tentative Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2021 was drawing to a close. The social distancing at the eerily quiet Traverse Theatre was so rigorous that it felt like one’s fellow audience members were sitting in a different postcode.
Then, bursting through the Covid anxiety, came the too-short run of This is Paradise. A seemingly modest solo play by Northern Irishman Michael John O’Neill (who was better known in Scottish theatre circles as the longstanding artistic producer of the Tron Theatre in Glasgow), this play about the traumatic life of a young, working-class Belfast woman garnered richly deserved rave reviews.
