Eileen Nicholas as Patrice French
Photo: Lesley Black

‘Patrice’s impish tittle-tattle lands her in some embarrassing shite.’

Editorial Rating: Nae Bad

The last in the Traverse’s very welcome A Play, a Pie and a Pint season.

A venetian blind is prone to twitch not tweet. Anyhow, it provides the tell-tale keeking backdrop to The Queen of Lucky People, without doubt set in a tenement flat near you.

Patrice French, clerical officer, retired, lives there, which might just be the cheap end of Kelvin Drive, G20, or off the Warriston Road, EH7; either way, close enough to really notice the neighbours and to go out once in a while for a walk by the river. Not that Patrice gets out much as she prefers to be in the immediate vicinity of her laptop, spending cushioned hours within her social network of choice, ‘Lucky People’.

She has the site’s language at her fingertips. She tallies ‘Awesomes’, ‘LOLs’, and ‘Friends’ –  they’re ‘Buddies’ on ‘Lucky People’ –  with mounting glee and notes her “Record!” stats with pride. A euphoric Third-Age experience or late onset OCD? Regardless, out of sight and careless, Patrice pushes out her gossipy posts. She does not answer the phone and the blind is kept down.

Writer Iain Heggie gives Eileen Nicholas as Patrice many a winning line of solo banter. Laughs are frequent (and a little easy?) when you give an elderly character the energy and the assurance of the hip and snappy catchphrase. The script is at its best when, through the piece, Patrice’s impish tittle-tattle lands her in some embarrassing shite. You will be pleased to see how Marigold Extra-Life kitchen gloves and doggie bags, off, do the business.

It is a redemptive tale. You might argue that Patrice is a better person for having discovered – and thrown out – the troll within. Certainly Nicholas’ sure and appealing performance is of a lonely woman who is happier and kinder at the end. Sympathetic direction by Emma Callander and focused design by Patrick McGurn combine to lift a bright but brittle character into a companionable place. And so the blind goes up.

My only problem, and quite possibly mine alone, was that I could not get Alan Bennett’s A Woman of No Importance and the other Talking Heads out of my head. It is actually to compliment Iain Heggie that the thought of Bennett’s Miss Schofield (Patricia Routledge) with a lap-top is so alarming. Patrice, though, is the more forgiving creation. More of a quiche person, than a pie eater.

Reviewer: Alan Brown (Seen 1 May)

Visit The Queen of Lucky People homepage here.

Buchan Lennon as Young Man and Amy Conochan as Skeleton Wumman.
Photo: Lesley Black.

‘Buchan is seamless, fluid and graceful. If he were Salome, I’d have the head of John the Baptist brought to him with an apple in its mouth.’

Editorial Rating: Nae Bad

“I’m not entirely sure I understood that,” I confided to no one in particular walking out into the thick Spring mist. The questions raised by Gerda Stevenson’s lunchtime script continued to buzz round my head as I wandered through the exhibition of Edward Lear watercolours at the National Gallery. It’s a sign that the magic of theatre is working I suppose. There’s a similarity in the way Lear represented mid-nineteenth century Greece and the seascape of myths conjured by Stevenson.

Both evoke folk memories held deep in the collective conscience. Both present skilled artists with a canvas for intricate flair – none of Lear’s paintings is larger than A3 while a Play, a Pie and Pint runs not much more than an hour. And neither entirely satisfy.

The muted colours of the Scots dialect run from Stevenson’s pallet into something of a monologue delivered by Amy Conachan as the Skeleton Wumman. The plot is an interplay of narratives woven from Inuit tales and mythology, offset by the innermost thoughts of a contemporary young girl.

There is an Inuit tale of a fisherman who ensnares bones of a forgotten young woman, cast out by her disapproving father. When the seemingly lifeless, barnacled relic of a past tragedy drinks a single tear shed in sorrow by the fisherman, her flesh and animation return, in turn ensnaring him. In Stevenson’s narrative the Skeleton Wumman might also stand for Sedna, Inuit goddess of the deep.

The young girl portrayed by Conachan is severely disabled. We find her at home being cared for by her father, an oldskool fisherman stuck on land by the inclement season. We hear her innermost thoughts, ideas and perspectives, which she is otherwise unable to communicate especially to her uncommunicative father.

Conachan leads a trio of performers who somehow sprint the marathon. She is an extremely gifted performer, one who knows how best to present the results of her Royal Conservatoire of Scotland training (where she is currently studying). She is the glue holding the narratives together and does not come unstuck even as the script’s monologue starts to skirt the bounds of monotony. Conachan’s relationships with Buchan Lennon (as her Father and as the Young Swimmer who has caught her eye at the city pool) are truly enervating.

Buchan is seamless, fluid and graceful. If he were Salome, I’d have the head of John the Baptist brought to him with an apple in its mouth. He inhabits both characters more like a Game of Thrones warg than someone playing make believe. Every nuance is there. The Father is at once terrified of nappies, especially now his daughter’s becoming a woman, whilst also tender, attentive and affectionate. The Young Swimmer is shy but friendly, a breath of fresh exotic air. Buchan fills Kipling’s unforgiving minute in If with miles of distance run.

Completing the trio is Seylan Baxter. Noted as one of the small, but growing, number of players reintroducing the cello into Scottish traditional music, Baxter provides far more than a soundscape. She employs the electric cello for both music and sound effects. The beating heart, the familiar musical phrase, the playful twist, each is managed from a push pedal system allowing her to sample herself as merrily she rolls along. Sitting on the far left, I’ve got the best view of the pedal system in action. Not a foot wrong, although one time Baxter almost hands Buchan an umbrella instead of an inflatable rubber ring; happens to the best of us.

The props, set, lighting and sound were all of the highest standard. The gentle sobbing from the techies responsible for all those cues added not unpleasantly to the overall effect. This was a production of very high production values and higher ambitions, the more so for having hit almost every mark.

I’ll be thinking about Stevenson’s script long after Edward Lear’s watercolours have washed out of memory. Spooky, to the point of spine-tingling, Skeleton Wumman is however unfairly weighted between the trio on stage. But that Conachan is a thoughtful and compelling performer, one who carries much more than her own weight, the play might have foundered.

—

Reviewer: Dan Lentell (Seen 22 April)

Visit Skeleton Wumman‘s homepage here.