Lucas all set for first festival run

LOCKERBIE lad Lucas McQueen has a license to ‘quill’ as he prepares to take his play to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this summer.

The 21-year-old actor and first-time playwright will be heading to the festival with his fellow actors for a three week run of his play ‘You Have Failed Me for the Last Time’.

It centres around supervillain Friedrich von Fittervach – portrayed by Lucas – who dreams of ruling the world from his remote volcano base. If only his workforce, his right-hand man or his restrictive board of investors shared the vision of his five-year plan. To make matters worse, a suave and cunning MI6 intruder, Agent Blonde, has breached the security of the island compound and sparked revolution among the corporation’s ranks.

Giving more detail, Lucas explained: “It’s a good, old fashioned Carry-on style spoof of the Bond genre, it’s a very light-hearted deconstruction of the 1960’s spy movies but with a modern twist because he’s a campy over the top super-villain and he’s a tech billionaire.”

The show was part of Lucas’s final year assessment at university, and having already performed it last month, he believes that the cast have set themselves up for a good festival run.

He added: “We all really like the show and everybody, even if they’re not a fan of Bond films, knows some of the spy movie tropes, and this is an exaggerated comedic take on them. But it’s all very family-friendly: when I was writing it I wanted to make sure that my younger sister could come and see it so that was how I gauged the humour, thinking ‘can I/ would I say this in front of her’? But there’s still a couple of jokes in there for the grown-ups too.

“I’m really happy with what we’ve created and I’m excited to bring it to the Fringe in August.”

You Have Failed Me for the Last Time starts its run on Saturday August 2, performing on even dates at the Space on the Mile.