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Water Colour

Pitlochry Festival Theatre

Four stars

 

Esme has gone a bridge too far in Millie Sweeney's new play, her professional debut after it won the St Andrews Playwriting Award. A Glasgow art student who's lost her mojo, Esme has given up, not just on her painting, but for  anything resembling life itself. Harris is just the opposite. He's just scored a new job with a high-class eaterie and is on a roll. He may only be washing dishes, but it's a start. 

 

When Harris saves Esme’s life after she attempts to throw herself into the Clyde, both are affected in radically different ways. As Esme manages to pull herself back to the surface with the help of family, therapy and friends she never knew she had, Harris sinks to the lower depths. As the duo’s parallel lives circle around each other, they trace an all too hazardous line between hope and despair.

This is an assured and heartfelt debut from Sweeney, whose initial diary like speeches by Esme and Harris become ever richer in her approach to the emotional and psychological wellbeing of anxious young people today. There's a poetry at play here, but it is always direct and shot through with an unsentimental drive that already sounds fully formed.

All this is brought to life in Sally Reid's pitch perfect production by a fine pair of performances from Molly Geddes and Ryan J Mackay, both of whom capture the highs and lows of lost youth with sensitivity and depth. Pulsed by Ross Brown’s electronic underscore for this partnership between Pitlochry Festival Theatre, the Byre Theatre St Andrews and Playwrights Studio Scotland, this is played out on Natalie Fern’s riverside adventure playground of a set with an abundance of youthful energy that reminds you that Esme and Harris are barely out of childhood themselves.

By the end, the chance meeting that drives Sweeney's play has changed both Esme and Harris's lives forever. Whatever happens next, as with Sweeney as a writer, some kind of future is guaranteed. 


The Herald, May 16th 2025

 

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