Byre Theatre, St Andrew’s
Four stars
For a troubling second, the sound of cameras
ricocheting shut midway through Firebrand Theatre’s revival of Frank McGuinness’
searing monologue about one woman’s response to losing her daughter sound like
applause. With twelve-year-old Mary caught in the crossfire of inner-city gang
warfare, Sal is making a public plea for her killers to own up, blessing them
as she does. She’s speaking into a microphone, as actress Janet Coulson does
for much of Richard Baron’s production, talking with rapid-fire nervous energy as
if doing some kind of stand-up confessional.
As Sal tells it in McGuinness’s painfully of the
moment reworking of Greek tragedy, she has fled to a remote Irish island,
squaring up to her own pain even as she exiles herself in the sort of
safe-house all too familiar in that part of the world. What follows in a
performance that flits between light and shade is a meditation on loss,
grieving and revenge that’s made all the more shocking by its everyday
matter-of-factness. Sal’s world is as empty now as the cottage she’s escaped
too, and the headlines on the wall are what now define her.
Co-produced with the Byre Theatre and Heart of Hawick,
a slow-burning dislodging of the senses is everything here. There’s the crack of
a gun-shot and the echo of a struck match in Jon Beales’ sound design. There’s the
way too how, in a certain light, designer Ken Harrison’s newspaper-lined wall looks
like a giant pixelated screen. It’s the sort of thing meant to protect the
innocent in TV reports like the ones Sal has become so well versed in. Most of
all, the smell of sulphur filters through the air as Sal strikes match after
match until finally she too is spent.
The Herald, February 5th 2018
ends
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