Gerry Kielty | Bouquets & Brickbats

24/11/23

Traverse Theatre

Framework Theatre is a rather special support organisation for emerging theatre-makers in Scotland, helping to build a “better, stronger, Scottish theatre sector”. It’s often said that you should write about what you know, and playwright Katie Fraser certainly does that, with this self-referential piece about, um, emerging theatre-makers, battling the old guard and forging a new way.

Actors Amy (Claire Wootton) and Greg (Gerry Kielty) are rehearsing a new piece about Flora MacDonald and Bonnie Prince Charlie. For her, it’s an exciting opportunity, her first professional role since leaving drama school. For him, it’s a backwards step; his career trajectory has been stymied by an unspecified scandal, so he’s slumming it, waiting out his time on the naughty step by directing and starring in this ‘little’ play.

To begin with, Amy is deferential, and Greg responds well to this. He’s pleasant, happy to share the benefits of his experience. But we soon see his darker side as Amy gains confidence and begins to question his peculiar interpretation of what is supposed to be a feminist play, written by ‘Harriet’, a young female playwright.

It makes sense that Greg should contrive to keep Harriet from the rehearsal room, as he tries to assert his dominance over the narrative. But Play Pretend suffers a little from the absence of this third character: I find my attention diverted from the action on stage as I wonder why she doesn’t ignore his instructions and come to see what’s happening to her play. It might be more convincing if we were to hear Greg making up outrageous excuses about why she can’t attend.

Fraser’s script comprises a series of vignettes, from which the story emerges bit by bit, the two actors learning more about each other as the rehearsal process goes on. It’s a strong idea and generally works well, although I do find myself wishing for higher stakes, and for a bolder, more cathartic climax.

Laura Valerie Walker’s sprightly direction highlights the meta-theatricality of the piece. The slow-motion transitions are effective in conveying the passing of time, moving us from one snapshot to the next, reminding us that this is all a performance, but they are too protracted, and start to become a little wearisome towards the end. The set, by Isadora Gough, with its over-abundance of tape marks on the floor and moveable furniture, reinforces the point that this is a constructed image, an illusion, designed to tell a tale.

Both Wootton and Kielty inhabit their dual roles convincingly. Wootton nails Amy’s mixture of self-assurance and desperation, her superficial politeness masking her frustration with Greg’s pomposity. She needs this part to kickstart her career, so she forces herself to put up with his condescension – but Wootton shows us what a struggle this is. It is to Kielty’s credit that we feel any sympathy for Greg: he is a bombastic, arrogant man, showing no contrition for his past aberrations and riding roughshod over the two young women he’s working with, assuming that he knows more than both the playwright and female lead about what this feminist drama needs. Nonetheless, Kielty manages to convey Greg’s underlying vulnerability, his fear at being left behind as the tide turns, his self-esteem dependent on his status.

With its artfully-woven historical and contemporary strands, Play Pretend is a thought-provoking and insightful piece about the struggles we face as we try to move towards a more egalitarian society. When you’re used to privilege, as the saying goes, equality feels like oppression.

4 stars

Susan Singfield

01/11/23

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

The Grandmothers Grimm, written and directed by Emily Ingram, returns to Edinburgh for the final two nights of its latest tour. Premiered in 2017, this long-running play continues to resonate six years later, drawing in a sizeable crowd tonight at the Traverse.

Revisionist fairy tales are nothing new: like pantomimes, these stories survive because they’re endlessly adaptable. But this production, by Some Kind of Theatre, is more about intellectual property: who invented the stories, who owns them – and who gets the credit.

It’s no surprise to learn that the past was sexist (the present is pretty sexist too). But it is perhaps news that the Grimm brothers’ project – collecting traditional folk tales for a compendium – actually deprived a lot of working-class female storytellers of their living, like a nineteenth-century Spotify. After all, who’s going to pay to listen to an old woman tell them a story if they have ready access to a printed copy of the text? Jacob (Justin Skelton) and Wilhelm (Gerry Kielty) might argue that they never claimed authorship of the tales, readily acknowledging their process, but it was their names on the cover – and their profits in the bank.

Marie Müller (Ingram) opens the play, alone, weaving her narrative with practised ease. This, we understand, is how the stories were traditionally told: a paying audience listening, rapt, as an elderly, peasant woman draws us in. When Jacob and Wilhelm burst onto the stage, accompanied by the middle-class Marie Hassenpflug (Sophie Harris), it’s clear that Old Marie doesn’t stand a chance. She’s displaced, allowed to speak only for as long as it takes for the brothers to transcribe her words.

Hassenpflug doesn’t fare much better. She’s educated so the Grimms are superficially more respectful towards her. Nonetheless, they purloin her stories with a blatant disregard for her authorship; it doesn’t occur to them to credit her (a bit like those celebrity children’s authors, who don’t credit their ghost writers…). Harris imbues Hassenpflug with a fierce dignity, which makes for a stark contrast to the brothers’ pettiness.

Kietly’s Wilhelm is focused on sales. He thinks the stories need to be sanitised so that parents will buy them for their children. Skelton’s Jacob hates this idea: he doesn’t want to create the kind of sappy stories he associates with Charles Perrault. He favours a warts and all approach, arguing that the darkness is what makes the tales. I’d agree with him if it weren’t for the fact that his version of ‘authenticity’ denies the existence of the real originators.

The staging could hardly be more simple: the performance area is almost empty, save for a desk and a couple of books; the only additional props are some feathers, cups and apples. This is no-frills, low-budget, black-box theatre – and none the worse for it. Skelton provides the comic relief, galloping round the stage as a donkey prince, as the quartet bring the various tales to life. It’s deftly done, so that we hear the original versions and then see them warped and changed. The pace never falters.

If The Grandmothers Grimm feels like a natural fit for the Edinburgh Fringe, then it’s nice to be transported back to August on this cold November night.

4 stars

Susan Singfield