OUTLYING ISLANDS. To 16 October.
Pitlochry.
OUTLYING ISLANDS
by David Greig.
Pitlochry Festival Theatre In rep to 16 October.
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat 8 Oct 2pm.
Runs 2hr 35min One interval.
TICKETS: 01796 484626.
www.pitlochry.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 26 September.
Strong revival of thrilling play.
It’s important good new plays have revivals. Though they’re less fashionable than premieres, they provide a trickle of lifeblood to playwrights’ bank accounts, give a chance for new light to be cast by different directors and actors, and bring vital new work to wider audiences.
There’s a wide gap between audiences at Edinburgh’s Traverse, where David Greig’s play premiered in 2002, and those at Pitlochry. It’s a lot braver programming this work, even in repertory and late in the season, for the big Festival Theatre auditorium than for the Traverse with its more specialised clientele.
If only because Greig’s play is one where the mature characters keep their clothes on, while the young ones take them off; something a modern Miss Prism might consider to be what drama means. It leads to a scene of remarkable physical intimacy. Remarkable, because it’s so crucial to the drama’s whole theme and so carefully worked into the relationship concerned, that the play would be possibly unthinkable, certainly diminished, without it.
There have, apparently, been few letters of complaint. That there have been some fits with the play’s moral world, where Martyn James’ wily island-owner, who knows more about the mission of two innocent young Englishmen to his remote Scottish island in the late 1930s than they do, is a strict non-conformist Christian.
He frames the main action, along with Richard Addison’s blithely unaware Captain who finally arrives to take the men back to England, bringing social normality, unaware the table he agrees to transport home is a reminder not only of sex but of the whole influence of young Ellen, who’s gradually infused the young visitors’ lives.
It’s all beautifully-played, the heart of the action by Joel Sams and Grant O’Rourke contrasting innocence and experience as the new arrivals, one at least thinking they’re on a super-birdspotting trip, and Claire Dargo as the quiet young woman who gradually asserts her pagan background. Ken Alexander’s direction charts the emotional warmth growing in a cold climate, while designer Charles Cusick Smith, with Ace McCarron’s lighting, creates a nest-like place of warm human contact in a barbaric climate.
Robert: Grant O’Rourke.
John: Joel Sams.
Kirk: Martyn James.
Ellen: Claire Dargo.
Captain: Richard Addison.
Director: Ken Alexander.
Designer/Costume: Charles Cusick Smith.
Lighting: Ace McCarron.
Music: Jon Beales.
Fight director: Raymond Short.
2008-10-08 14:05:16