Skip to main content

Thrown

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Four stars

 

Wrestling of one form or another has always been a handy metaphor to dramatise the thorny issues of identity politics, be they based on class, race, sex or gender. This seems true of women’s wrestling, in particular. See Claire Luckham’s 1978 feminist fable best known as Trafford Tanzi, all the way up to Netflix hit, G.L.O.W. 

 

As Nat McCleary’s debut play makes clear from the start, however, this potent dissection of five women’s lives has nothing to do with the showbiz glitz of the professional ring. Rather, the bonding that comes between the women is done by way of Backhold Wrestling, an infinitely grittier fixture of the Highland Games circuit.

Here, driven team leader Pamela trains up Imogen, Helen, Jo and Chantelle to take on all comers. The biggest confrontations, however, come between themselves, as they spar with each other emotionally while wrestling with private demons. 

 

While middle aged Helen searches for a new life, the bond between mixed race Jo and her best friend Chantelle is threatened by well-heeled London girl Imogen. Most troubled of all is Pamela, whose uptight demeanour masks a struggle to find her true self. 

 

All this is brought to combative life in Johnny McKnight’s National Theatre of Scotland productionwith energetic verve. The crack squad of EfèAgwele as Imogen, Maureen Carr as Helen, Lesley Hart as Pamela, Adiza Shardow as Jo and Chloe-Ann Tylor as Chantelle never let up for a second. 

 

In essence, McCleary’s play isn’t a million miles away from what John Godber used to do with various sporting subjects in some of his popular plays for Hull Truck Theatre. Given a twenty first century kick by current social mores as much as Luke Sutherland’s score, Thrown possesses vigour enough to give it fresh currency in its heart and soul depiction of five women of today holding on for dear life.


The Herald, August 7th, 2023

 

Ends

 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ron Butlin - The Sound of My Voice

When Ron Butlin saw a man who’d just asked him the time throw himself under a train on the Paris Metro, it was a turning point in how his 1987 novel, The Sound Of My Voice, would turn out. Twenty years on, Butlin’s tale of suburban family man Morris Magellan’s existential crisis and his subsequent slide into alcoholism is regarded as a lost classic. Prime material, then, for the very intimate stage adaptation which opens in the Citizens Theatre’s tiny Stalls Studio tonight. “I had this friend in London who was an alcoholic,” Butlin recalls. “He would go off to work in the civil service in the morning looking absolutely immaculate. Then at night we’d meet, and he’s get mega-blootered, then go home and continue drinking and end up in a really bad state. I remember staying over one night, and he’d emerge from his room looking immaculate again. There was this huge contrast between what was going on outside and what was going on inside.” We’re sitting in a café on Edinburgh’s south sid
Post a Comment
Read more

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) 1. THE STONE ROSES    Don’t Stop ( Silvertone   ORE   1989) The trip didn’t quite start here for what sounds like Waterfall played backwards on The Stone Roses’ era-defining eponymous debut album, but it sounds
Post a Comment
Read more

Edinburgh Rocks – The Capital's Music Scene in the 1950s and Early 1960s

Edinburgh has always been a vintage city. Yet, for youngsters growing up in the shadow of World War Two as well as a pervading air of tight-lipped Calvinism, they were dreich times indeed. The founding of the Edinburgh International Festival in 1947 and the subsequent Fringe it spawned may have livened up the city for a couple of weeks in August as long as you were fans of theatre, opera and classical music, but the pubs still shut early, and on Sundays weren't open at all. But Edinburgh too has always had a flipside beyond such official channels, and, in a twitch-hipped expression of the sort of cultural duality Robert Louis Stevenson recognised in his novel, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a vibrant dance-hall scene grew up across the city. Audiences flocked to emporiums such as the Cavendish in Tollcross, the Eldorado in Leith, The Plaza in Morningside and, most glamorous of all due to its revolving stage, the Palais in Fountainbridge. Here the likes of Joe Loss and Ted Heath broug
2 comments
Read more