A Beginning, A Middle and An End

Tron Theatre, Glasgow
3 stars
If Adam and Eve had scromphed down home-grown avocadoes instead of 
apples, things might have turned out a whole lot rosier in the garden. 
Or at least that’s the impression you get from the domestic Eden built 
by the biblically named Ade, Kane and Evelyn in Sylvia Dow’s new play, 
lovingly directed by Selma Dimitrijevic for the London-based Greyscale 
company in association with Stellar Quines.

A couple, giddy on the possibilities of each other, fall together, set 
up home and play happy families, knee-deep in a forest of plants and 
acquired memories that gradually fill up their room. The latter is 
depicted via an extended wordless sequence that would put some 
furniture removal firms to shame, as the pair embark on a great 
adventure of magic moments and endless games of Scrabble. Things only 
darken with a seemingly estranged prodigal’s return and a death in the 
family that comes gift-wrapped.

All this is implied rather than told in a very particular aesthetic 
employed by Dow and Dimitrijevic on Oliver Townsend’s pin-board set, 
 from the way the actors loll about eyeing up the audience as they enter 
while one of them strums a guitar, to the final, multi-lingual, 
life-affirming chorus. It’s an aesthetic that falls just the right side 
of quirky in what is essentially an extended meditation on life, death 
and the love that clutters up the place in-between the two.

If Dow’s ideas are big, there’s an essential warmth to the performances 
of Jon Foster, Andrew Gourley and Emilie Patry. This is accentuated by 
Scott Twynholm’s lovely score in a play that recognises that, whatever 
happens, life goes on regardless.

The Herald, September 7th 2012

ends