Skip to main content

Water Colour

Traverse Theatre

Four stars

 

Milly Sweeney’s exploration of twenty-something crisis by way of her debut professional play has already caused ripples since it premiered at Pitlochry Festival Theatre in 2025. This came after Sweeney won the St Andrews Playwriting Award for her efforts. As the original production receives a last minute Edinburgh Festival Fringe run, its study of two young people’s respective long dark nights of the soul following a chance meeting on a bridge overlooking the River Clyde is well worth another look. 

 

Esme is an all at sea art student, a small town girl in the big city with no friends, no motivation and what looks like no future. Harris is a cheeky young lad on the up, who has scored a job in the kitchen of a fancy restaurant and an inexplicably cheap riverside apartment with his best pal. When Harris saves Esme from throwing herself off the bridge, the duo’s parallel lives go in different ways before the tide turns, and Esme is helping prevent Harris from going under. 

 

Sally Reid’s production brings out the everyday traumas of a generation of young people caught in the cross fire of external pressures to aim high in a brutal world that, like Harris’ boss, cuts them no slack, emotionally or otherwise. 

 

This is brought to life by Sweeney out of a desire to change that. Her solutions for both Esme and Harris come by way of other people, with Esme especially becoming the accidental social glue between them. Delivered with a heartfelt commitment that steers shy of self help platitudes, Molly Geddes as Esme and Ryan J Mackay as Harris get to the full human heart of the matter in a debut that promises much to follow in its wake. 

 

Until 30 Aug, various times.


The Herald, August 9th 2026

 

ends

 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Billy Elliot The Musical

Edinburgh Playhouse Five stars A big National Coal Board sign looms large at the opening of Lee Hall and Elton John's decade-old musical stage version of Hall and director Stephen Daldry's hit turn of the century film. In a tale of one little boy's liberation as a dancer against the backdrop of the 1980s miners strike, however, the Durham Miners banner and the 'Save Our Community' sash held aloft matter more. It is this call to arms that forms the heart of Daldry's production, as Billy becomes a potty-mouthed beacon of hope in a situation where picket line, thin blue line and chorus line rub uneasily up against each other. Given such a context, there is bound to be some pretty grown-up stuff going on here, be it the institutionalised homophobia in Billy's village, the class war going on within it, or Billy's grieving for his dead mother that drives his every move. And, as so magnificently choreographed by Peter Darling, what moves they are. Watch...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
1 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) ...
Post a Comment
Read more