| Sorrow in Snowdonia |
At Sgript Cymru |
| Sgript Cymru- Indian Country , Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh , June 17, 2003 |
| Of all the Celtic cultures that have survived to tell their tale, the Welsh is in many ways the most successful and robust. But in theatre, it's often, the most silent, even shorter than Scotland of traditional dramatic forms that go beyond story-telling and preaching; which is why it's particularly rewarding to see the new Welsh company Sgript Cymru - dedicated to producing the best work of contemporary Welsh-based playwrights - making its first visit to the Traverse. One of the striking things about Meic Povey's Indian Country though, is how untheatrical this brief four-hander often is, despite the tense situation it describes. Set in a valley in Snowdonia in the late 1950s, during the filming of the Ingrid Bergman film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, it uses the classic situation of a traditional rural community invaded by a Hollywood film crew to explore some powerful affinities between the hill-farming people of north Wales and another "indigenous" group much more familiar from the movies, the native Americans whose cultures were shattered with the white conquest of the West. The play's hero, Mos, is a 14-year-old boy, who appears both as a teenager and as a man of almost 60, looking back from the present day; and through his eyes, we watch his widowed mother, Gwyneth, struggle with a disastrous season on the farm, drift into a brief liaison with a minor movie employee, and gradually abandon her austere and dignified old way of life for a brief hard-drinking summer as truck-driver to the stars. The play's main problem seems to lie in the fact that although Povey puts the boy centre-stage, it's actually the story of his mother, superbly played by Eiry Thomas, which carries the real dramatic momentum; the result is a script that often seems more like a staged elegy for a lost mother, than a drama built around her own heroic life-force. But there's some haunting poetry here, writing that's lyrical, funny, sharp as tacks, and then as bleak as the high dark crags of John Howes's painted backdrop. This is not a flawless show; the situation is familiar, the action often comes slow. But it has its own rich, disturbing voice nonetheless; and it's one well worth hearing, with sorrow and with fellow-feeling. |
Reviewed by: Joyce McMillan The Scotsman |
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