Like an unleashed braid of long hair, Sharman MacDonald’s new play starts out as a collection of seemingly disconnected strands. But as these develop separately yet contiguously around the quarters of Robin Don’s brilliantly realised vertical set, they merge into a much stronger and provocative whole.
Set in a village in the East Neuk of Fife, got up to look like the Med, it is one of those long, lingering Scottish summer evenings. Roslyn, the eponymous young woman, died a year past and as her surviving mother, lover, fan club and various lookers-on talk and play, they reveal a community stuck in the past. But as the strands come together, their melancholy dissipates and they find a way to look to the future.
Irritating but superbly believable, Helen McAlpine and Joanne Cummins play Izzy and Pam, a pair of younger teenagers fascinated by Roslyn, Izzy to the point of obsession. Without much to do, Sean Biggerstaff plays Matt, Roslyn’s boyfriend, who mostly just looks melancholy and hunky, with Emma Campbell Jones as his overshadowed new girlfriend.
Sandra Voe and Sheila Reid provide a superb double act as two older women warming themselves on stones in the graveyard near Roslyn’s grave, remembering their own losses and coming to terms with their own revelations. Patricia Kerrigan and Christopher Dunne create a tricky but solid centre as Roslyn’s mother, Cath, and a customer at her seaside cafe. Under Mike Bradwell’s subtle direction, as Cath and Matt let go, the play’s real texts shine through.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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