BLOODED by Isabel Wright. Boilerhouse tour to 22 November.

Tour

BLOODED
by Isabel Wright

Boilerhouse on tour to 22 November 2001

Runs 1hr 40min No interval
Review Timothy Ramsden 27 October at Byre Theatre, St. Andrews

High energy flashbacks to the last summer of youth and friendship.Here's culture-shock: to go from a matinee in the Byre's main house, where Mull Theatre chug gently through Para Handy's Treasure, up to the elegant studio space for the rush of Isabel Wright's new volt-packed play.

It's the more impressive because the ingredients are familiar enough. There's the retrospective on a key moment of life the actors step out of the space and take up mikes when they move in to the present. Scattered to the four corners of the stage, voices disembodied, the characters are more distanced from us than when they re-enter the immediacy of the past.

It's hard to call it a golden time, it was so full of troubles. Yet it was the last time the ties of teenage friendship bonded them together, for all their mad differences. Amy, the wild kid pulling herself towards destruction is idolised by Lou, the one with a future who steals to give her friend unwanted presents. Donna accommodates the reputation of slag to avoid the discovery of her virginity, while Bernie gets along with the nickname that throws her size back at her.

Dissolving friendships, the rites of passage drama: we've had these before and it doesn't matter. Apart from the sheer verve of Wright's script, matched by all the performances in Paul Pinson's turbo-charged production, the play's success lies in the individual details that demand interest in, and respect for, each of these girls going on women.

And Helen McAlpine's two characters enrich the mix. The Dead Girl's corpse found on the shore offsets the friends' colourful lives. And Tess, first seen fizzing with her individuality, becomes a person dispirited by exclusion from all the groups she doesn't want to belong to. It's a paradigm for the others' slow journeys out of the certainties of a life that will never be the same again.

Donna: Christina Cochran
Tess/Dead Girl: Helen McAlpine
Amy: Kate Dickie
Bernie: Laura McKenna
Lou: Molly Innes

Director: Paul Pinson
Designer: Karen Tennent
Lighting: Renny Robertson
Choreographer: Dawn Hartley
Sound Design/Composer: Chris Colvin

2001-11-09 13:54:46