North
Edinburgh Arts, Edinburgh
Three
stars
The
grass is always greener on the other side of no-man’s-land for the two un-named
young people at the centre of this short exploration of identity presented by
Birds of Paradise theatre company, currently touring largely out of the way
hamlets across the land. One lives at the centre of the big city’s throbbing
heart, a rush of noisy life where nobody knows your name, which is fine
sometimes. The other is struggling to fit in with the insular ways of a rural
small town, where everybody’s business is public property.
Both are
in retreat from where they feel stuck and are looking for somewhere safe to
land. Separately they stumble on an out-of-the-way tented idyll, where
activism, artistry and good times go hand in hand. Accepted for who they are on
their own terms, both young people have an epiphany en route to finding their
voice inside a very special community.
While
this has been the life-changing way of things in summer camps and outdoor
retreats of one form or another since time immemorial, Heather Marshall’s
production of her own script that starts off as a pair of monologues which eventually
intertwine takes things beyond town and country. By filling in the blanks of
everyday protest that help define a woke generation weaned on Occupy and Extinction
Rebellion but with roots in far older movements, the play is fired by an
intimate sense of the power to change the self as much as anything else.
As the
two youngsters on the verge, Nicholas Alban and Conrad Williamson find common
ground throughout their heartfelt delivery, and are aided on screen by British
Sign Language actor Jamie Rae. As a pointer to a more progressively inclusive
world where people are free to explore different identities without prejudice,
Marshall’s play opens up a space where the personal meets the political in
non-binary times.
The Herald, July 11th 2019
ends
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