The Argus: Brighton Festival Thumb

“Two actors, two guitars and not a lot else” is how Cora Bissett describes Midsummer [A Play With Songs], David Greig’s critically-acclaimed reclamation of the romantic comedy.

Cora stars alongside fellow musician/actor Matthew Pidgeon as two 30-somethings who meet on a rainy day in Edinburgh over midsummer weekend.

Despite being totally unsuited for each other (he’s a car salesman with lots of fingers in different, dodgy pies, while she’s a high-powered divorce lawyer) they sleep together and embark on a lost weekend.

“David has stolen the format of the romantic comedy and placed it in a very unideal location,” says Cora.

“There aren’t many romantic comedies set in Edinburgh, or certainly not the part where this one is set, and not in the rain.

“Everything about it is mismatched and wrong. It’s not all lovey-dovey with strolls along the bay. The people are messy, the sex is messy, everything is a bit messy.”

As well as playing the two characters at the centre of the story, Cora and Matthew also play a range of different roles, even stepping into the male character Bob’s head in one sequence.

“David experiments with direct storytelling,” says Cora, who admits that the chance to work with the writer was one of the reasons she got involved with the project.

“There’s lots of narrative and talking directly to the audience, before hopping back into naturalistic scenes with each other, or breaking into song.

“It’s a bit of an anti-musical; he wanted to create a play with songs, but not one with big tunes or epic numbers. It’s an understated version of a musical, and that’s also what interested me.”

Cora has an impressive musical pedigree, as well as a 13-year-long career as an actress.

At the age of 17 she was singer with the Fife band Darlingheart, who were signed to Phonogram in the early 1990s and even toured with Blur and Radiohead.

“We had a dodgy manager who got a record company feeding frenzy going,” she says.

“Then it all went monumentally and disastrously wrong, helped by the same rock and roll manager – I learned a lot about life and business!

“Where most parents freak out when their child goes to drama college, after all that had happened, my parents were saying it was a sensible career.

“Midsummer has been a dream job for me. I get to play all these hard gangsters, these Edinburgh low-lifes, and exercise every single performative muscle I’ve got!”

The play also reflects the early mid-life crisis among 30-somethings, as both characters try to work out what they want to do with their lives.

“I guess we make such big demands on ourselves,” says Cora. “We must have the amazing relationships, the fulfilling lives, have travelled the world and done stuff.

“Our parents had a job for life but you just don’t get them any more. We have these ridiculous expectations, so maybe we start to question where we are at an even earlier age.”

* 8pm tonight and tomorrow, 9.30pm Thurs and Fri, 7pm Sat, tickets from £5, 01273 709709