Tron Theatre, Glasgow 4 stars The pains of confinement inside women’s prisons have long been a source of dramatic intrigue, sometimes of the exploitative variety. Rona Munro’s play is no Prisoner: Cell Block H, however. Rather, Munro’s exploration of what happens when one inmate’s life sentence is interrupted by visits from the daughter she hasn’t seen for fifteen years is a tense and complex affair. First seen at the Traverse in 2002 and revived here by director Richard Baron for the Borders-based Firebrand company in association with the Heart of Hawick, Iron is a battle of wills between Fay, who stabbed her husband to death, and Josie, the daughter Fay never saw growing up. While Fay has been made brittle and manipulative by institutionalisation, Josie only wants to know what life used to be like, when she still had a dad. Baron’s brooding production is led by Blythe Duff, who plays Fay with a flint-eyed concentration and complete lack of sentimentality. As Josie, Irene Allan flits between amateur psychology, trying to impress her and out and out sparring. There are moments when Fay and Josie’s increasingly fraught exchanges could be the cut and thrust of most mother-daughter spats. Only the two prison guards, one male, one female, watching over them like uniformed hawks reminds you that all the talk about ear-rings and boys is taking place behind bars. Fay’s relationships with guards Sheila and George are in some ways more important than her one with Josie. Claire Dargo’s Sheila in particular shares a tense intimacy with Fay that Josie will never have. In the end, the emotional lockdown Fay sentences herself to is the only option in Munro’s brutal study of life behind bars. The Herald, November 8th 2012 ends
Myra McFadyen – Actress Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024 Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.” For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...
Comments