A MAN seeks asylum in the UK on the basis he is “100% mod” in a new show by an award-winning Scottish playwright.

Douglas Maxwell’s I Can Go Anywhere is described by the Traverse Theatre as “a mod anthem to solidarity and acceptance in an increasingly hostile world”.

The two-hander sees Paul McCole, best known as Limmy’s pal in Limmy’s Show, as Stevie, a disillusioned academic and youth culture expert who is visited by a man who calls himself “Jimmy the Mod”, a reference to Phil Daniels’ starring role in 1979’s Quadrophenia.

The Who-scored rock opera sparked a revival in the sixties-born subculture which channeled alienation and disposable income into sharp fashions, top-class sounds and scooters festooned with mirrors and flags.

Its influence remains today in Northern Soul weekenders, scooter rallies and a dress code involving rules about desert boots (Clark’s), army parkas (oversized) and the number of buttons on your Italian suit (three).

Mystery man Jimmy, played by T2 Trainspotting actor Nebli Basani, is immaculate when he arrives at the professor’s home. With just days to go until the government interview which will decide his future, he’s desperate for his plan to work.

“Jimmy refuses to tell the academic his real name or the story of how he got here,” says Maxwell. “He just says he’s seeking asylum on being a mod, on the basis that mod is the most British thing there’s ever been and the greatest British thing there’s ever been. The play is about the refusal to tell your own story and looking at where you find pride, in your look, in your voice, in music, in fashion and culture”.

I Can Go Anywhere – a line from The Who’s Anyway Anyhow Anywhere – is Maxwell’s first play for the Traverse since The Whip Hand, a family drama tackling Scotland’s role in the slave trade which premiered at 2017’s Fringe.

It was the fourth of a clutch of acclaimed Maxwell plays around the time, including Fever Dream: Southside, Yer Granny and Charlie Sonata, an offbeat fairytale for adults starring Sandy Grierson.

“When you’ve had that kind of run in Scotland, you need to take a break,” says Maxwell. “Then I felt I could do more to get my plays read in front of an audience, which is getting trickier and trickier, but that’s where you learn and get better.”

A script reading at the Playwright’s Studio in January affirmed Maxwell’s decision to downsize the play from an original full-scale production to an intimate two-hander.

“The re-imagining brought it to life,” he says. “It wasn’t really firing when I’d first written it for a bigger cast. Bringing it into one room between these two people also made it seem more real. It became more believable that one guy could get it into his head that he could get asylum on the basis of being a mod.”

Maxwell’s play is one of two world premiere productions to be staged at the new writing theatre this festive season, with Strange Tales, Pauline Lockhart and Ben Harrison’s adaptation of stories by Qing dynasty writer Pu Songling, running at the Traverse from December 2.

Maxwell’s play sees Eve Nicol make her directorial debut at the Traverse following an incredible couple of years which have seen her assist Cora Bissett on What Girls Are Made Of, John Crowley on Local Hero and Stewart Laing for THEM! at Tramway. In recent months Nicol has also directed Abi Morgan’s Mistress Contract at the Tron and The Drift, Hannah Lavery’s performance-poetry monologue for the National Theatre of Scotland. In August she took If You’re Feeling Sinister, her musical based on the classic Belle and Sebastian album, to the Fringe.

“I keep telling her she should write a book about it,” says Maxwell. “Eve is part of this new wave of exciting playwrights coming from this country, and they are all women. There’s Isobel McArthur, who’s getting standing ovations for Pride and Prejudice*(*sort of)[CORR], Morna Young, Frances Poet, Ellie Stewart and Meghan Tyler, who wrote Crocodile Fever. These are all new playwrights achieving audiences now, while it took me five or six years.”

While Tyler’s revenge fantasy was set during the Troubles when the sectarian divide overshadowed all else, I Can Go Anywhere explores the role of culture in creating identity and belonging and asks why it’s undervalued in comparison to nationality, religion, politics and ethnicity.

“Jimmy could have been a Doctor Who fan or a Chelsea fan,” says Maxwell. “A fan of anything where you can find your own identity and which has its own rules. Mod just gives you all these rich cultural threads and it’s part of my life, I know a lot about it.

“More of where I come from, comes from the books and films and music that I love than anything else. It’s also about your credentials and your perceived authenticity – things which can be most obviously applied to asylum, but also to mod – which has so many rules.”

December 11 to 21, 8pm, 12, 14, 19 & 21 mats 2.30pm, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh. Tel: 0131 228 1404. www.traverse.co.uk