Alice Clark

Ship Rats

19/09/23

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

It’s the year 1880 and Jessie (Madeline Grieve) is in big trouble. She’s just murdered her husband and she’s covered in his blood. He’s the captain of the ship she’s currently aboard, a cruel tyrant who recently condemned an innocent cabin boy to fifty lashes for stealing a biscuit. He probably had it coming, but still, his crew are unlikely to be sympathetic.

To make matters worse, Jessie has sought refuge in the cabin of the ship’s Chinese cook, Jin Hai (Sebastian Lim-Seet), a man with probelms of his own. Shunned by the other members of the crew, he is planning a daring escape from the ship – but, try as he might, he cannot find the box of matches he needs in order to make his departure go with a bang.

When the inevitable hue and cry kicks off, Jessie and Jin Hai realise that they’ll have to ignore their respective differences and hide out together. In doing so, they begin to realise that they actually have quite a bit in common. Their conversation takes in a range of subjects: colonialism and Chinese medicine; murder and morning sickness; ginger and gunpowder.

Alice Clark’s spirited two-hander, a co-production between Òran Mór and the Traverse Theatre, is inspired by the adventures of the playwright’s own great-great-grandmother, a seafaring lass with a colourful backstory. The fact that the two protagonists in Ship Rats speak like contemporary Glaswegians out on the lash is initially jarring but, once I settle into the rhythm, it makes for a fun-filled fifty minutes, even if the tone is sometimes relentlessly frenetic.

Grieve offers a rollicking turn as the amusingly foulmouthed Jessie, while Lim-Seet makes an astute foil for her bawdy barrage of invective. If occasionally Jessie and Jin-Hai seem to possess the kind of insight that really only comes with the advantage of historical perspective, well that’s acceptable, given that this wants more than anything else to be a commentary on the toxic nature of Empire.

Director Laila Noble keeps the action propulsive enough to ensure that the pace never flags and Ship Rats has me entertained right up to the final scene.

3.4 stars

Philip Caveney

Made in China

11/10/22

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Janet (Jo Freer) lives in Wishaw, near Glasgow. Her daughter Tash’s birthday is fast approaching and Janet is frantically trying to procure the weird selection of fripperies Tash says she simply ‘has to have’ if her party is to be a success. When she demands some novelty lights in the shape of… er, aubergines, who is Janet to argue with her? She obligingly opens the Amazon app and clicks through her order.

Meanwhile, in China, Hui Ting (Amber Lin) is working long shifts at a factory, where such dubious items are produced and packaged, before being shipped all around the world. She has much to contend with, struggling to meet her targets and constantly being fined for trivial matters – even, in one case, for having her period at an inconvenient time. But she has a powerful motive for working around the clock: she doesn’t want her daughter to end up in the same position.

And then Janet discovers a scrap of paper in her latest order, something that Hui Ting has scribbled in a rare free moment and accidentally dropped into the box. Janet decides that she needs to find out what the note means. It takes her a while but, once she has an answer, she’s compelled to reappraise the way she lives her own life…

Made in China is a deceptively simple two-hander, the latest offering from A Play, a Pie and a Pint. On a stage festooned with cardboard boxes, the women appear to work side-by-side, their lives intertwined, even though they never interact. Playwright Alice Clark cleverly draws out the fascinating parallels between the two, and shows the kind of ripple effect that can be initiated by even the most innocuous form of Western consumerism. Both Freer and Lin make their characters utterly believable. I love Janet’s snarky, self-deprecating tone and I love too that Hui Ting is not presented as saintly, but as somebody who has her own agenda and is quite prepared to bend the rules in order to achieve her goals.

Clark’s eloquently written play alternates between harsh reality and the enduring allure of dreams. Philip Howard’s direction brings this prescient piece to a satisfying conclusion. As polemics go, it’s one of the best I’ve seen in quite a while.

4.1 stars

Philip Caveney