Skip to main content

Skye: A Thriller

Summerhall

3 stars

 

Annie’s little brother thinks he sees their father on the beach while on holiday in Skye. Given that their dad died in a car crash the year before, however, they might just have seen a ghost. With Annie’s twin sister and teenage brother on board, the siblings find themselves chasing a driverless silver car. A tall man who might be the only one who can solve the mystery remains forever just out of reach. 

 

Thirty years on, Annie is still chasing ghosts as she relates her story on camera for the sort of prime time supernatural shows that fill up wall-to-wall digital TV stations. As she revisits the scene, the past comes flooding back, from her father’s death and her drink addled mother, to the interplay between her and her siblings and what happened next. 

 

What emerges over the taut fifty-five minutes of Matthew Iliffe’s production - the first for the newly formed K Media with Summerhall Arts - is a dark meditation on loss, grief and how that loss stays with you in a way that defines a moment and everything that follows. 

 

As Annie, Dawn Steele possesses a captivating presence that sees her bring Annie’s past to life and embody her assorted siblings as if she is reliving what happened. As her brother, James Robinson does something similar as he too goes on a wild goose chase destined to remain unresolved. 

 

Shrouded in darkness and pared to the bone, Keel’s debut play has the feel of an old school creepy thriller in a powerful mood driven piece that lays bare the scars of Annie’s haunting in chilling fashion. 


Until August 24.


The Herald, August 6th 2025

 

Ends 

 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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) ...

Myra Mcfadyen - An Obituary

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...

The Passage – Hip Rebel Degenerates: Black, White and Red All Over

Prelude – The Power of Three   Fear. Power. Love. This life-and-death (un)holy trinity was the driving force and raisons d’être of The Passage, the still largely unsung Manchester band sired in what we now call the post-punk era, and who between 1978 and 1983 released four albums and a handful of singles.    Led primarily by composer Dick Witts, The Passage bridged the divide between contemporary classical composition and electronic pop as much as between the personal and the political. In the oppositional hotbed of Margaret Thatcher’s first landslide, The Passage fused agit-prop and angst, and released a song called Troops Out as a single. The song offered unequivocal support for withdrawing British troops from Northern Ireland.    They wrote Anderton’s Hall, about Greater Manchester’s born again right wing police chief, James Anderton, and, on Dark Times, rubbed Brechtian polemic up against dancefloor hedonism. On XOYO, their most commercial and potentially mo...