At Sgript Cymru |
| Sgript Cymru- Indian Country , Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh , June 17, 2003 |
| I often think Welsh and Scots should be closer cousins than they are. For two nations who have problems and some distant heritage in common we know remarkably little about one another. Meic Povey's Indian Country, set in 1958 when Hollywood came to shoot the Inn of the Sixth Happiness in Snowdonia, resonates with our own Scottish preoccupations but there are interesting differences. Come back to bury his mother, Mos is looking back at his childhood life. We never learnt what the Old Mos played by Rhys Richards became but his filmic good looks and clothes suggest he grew up to be one. Old Mos's younger self, Sion Pritchard's Mos is a strange disjointed boy who finds it hard to look the world or adults in the eye and is intensely realised by Pritchard. Keeping the home going and the farm is Mos's mother Gwyneth, Eiry Thomas. When the play opens you think she's a war widow but her husband's death is more droll, he listened to the advice he gave to foreigners (the blah, blah English) and fell off a Welsh Mountain. The dislodging trip Mos and his mother encounter is Gregg, Stewart Laing, an Americian over with the film. He calls the Chinese cast members "Japs" and clearly has war scars which are never explained but we are left to interestingly be aware that his past will always unsettle his present. He almost becomes like a brother to the always galloping over the fields, his gun in his holster, cowboy hatted young Mos, even though Garry's quarter Indian background. Thomas's Gwyneth is a strange women half roughen by her farming responsibilities yet full of passion aroused strongly in a terrible thunderstorm. All are coping with changes they can not control or escape. It's also clash of cultures, love and languages delicately and deftly handled by Povey. He's not a man to hammer a narrative home, he wakes the audience's curiosity and never underestimates its intelligence. Some of our writers could learn from his light, very effective touch. It's interesting too that although there are jokes about our large common neighbours, the English, the speaking of their tongue is not mocked as it would be here amongst Scots speakers, suggesting the Welsh of the late 50's were more like the Gaels. The set is shallow in depth and wide, recalling a film screen, the backcloths show the Snowdonian mountain ridge. In certain lighting the production seems to have haze moving up out of the Welsh valleys. This is Povey's first play written in the English language but its rhythms and sense of place have a Welsh lilt, we Scots recognise as cousin to our own as well as a complexity which is fascinating and universal. One of Povey's Welsh Language plays Tair is being translated to English in partnership with the RSC. |
Reviewed by: © Thelma Good 2003 - Originally published on EdinburghGuide.com |
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