The Long Drop review: Mina's 1956 Glasgow murder play
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- The Long Drop runs at Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, until 20 June, adapted by Linda McLean from Denise Mina's true-crime novel about a real 1956 triple murder in the Burnside suburb of South Lanarkshire
- Marion Watt, her daughter Vivienne, and sister Margaret Brown were shot dead in their beds; police suspected Marion's husband William Watt despite his alibi placing him 90 miles away on the night
- Peter Manuel, the underworld figure Watt tracked down in a bid to clear his name, is played by Brian Vernel with "dead-eyed stares and baby-faced charisma" — a self-delusion the review says offsets his nastiness
- Keith Fleming plays Watt as a "bumptious businessman" with "more cash than class," overheated and flustered, never quite in control of the night's boozy, unravelling revelations
- Dominic Hill directs a "dreamlike production" on Jen McGinley's half-courtroom, half-saloon set, where scenes melt into each other "like dissolving fragments of truth" against a backdrop of a Searchers film poster
- The review frames Glasgow's criminal milieu as "spivvy club owners, sharp-tongued bar staff and bluffing lowlifes" — a world the review calls comic "were it not so grim," yet "darkly compelling"
Why it matters: The production puts one of Glasgow's most notorious unsolved cases back in the public eye through a literary-theatrical lens, with a limited run closing 20 June at Citizens Theatre; the review's central tension — between the night's dark humour and its basis in a real triple murder — is what makes the adaptation work as theatre rather than true-crime pastiche.
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