It is a fair bet that when Prime Productions tours this version of award-winning writer Zinnie Harris’s powerful and absorbing play in the remoter reaches of Scotland its emotional impact and historical resonances for those isolated communities will be profound, poignant and sharply relevant.
It is inspired by her own family links to Tristan da Cunha, a sparsely populated dot in the Atlantic Ocean, half-way between South Africa and South America. The island was evacuated following its partial destruction during a volcanic eruption in 1961.
Benjamin Twist’s launch production at The Byre Theatre, St Andrews is hugely successful and exquisitely balanced in holding to a measured pace and evoking the unique atmosphere of island life, where the importance of mutual dependence, the preciousness of little things, penguins’ eggs, potatoes, patches of ground, time honoured customs and a visiting supply vessel, are all vital for survival.
It is a richly and subtly textured piece, sensitively portrayed by a fine ensemble cast who use the strange, archaic language of the island, to create a deeply engrossing and moving sense of place and people poised on the cusp of disruption as they are about to be shipped to Southampton where they struggle to cope with a life in an industrial society.
Two performances blaze out. Carol Ann Crawford clutches the part of the childless matriarch Mill to her heart with passion and sincerity shifting from a quaint naivety and wonderment to a feisty tower of strength, while Jonathan Battersby cuts a commanding, yet vulnerable leader whose descent into tragedy and death becomes a harrowing metaphor for the demise of a society which cannot adapt.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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