Janice Parker | Bouquets & Brickbats

31/03/23

Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh

The titular Castle Lennox is a hospital, but not as we know it. Places like this – providing long-term residential care for people with learning disabilities, shutting them off from the outside world – no longer exist. Here, playwright Linda McLean explores the pros and the cons: the deep, affecting friendships forged and the toxic regime, rife with bullying.

It’s 1969 and teenager Annis (Emma McCaffrey) is proving too much of a handful for her stepmother (Fletcher Mathers). Annis is lively, independent and full of fun, and she also has a learning disability, which means she’s eligible for enrolment at Castle Lennox. Simultaneously entranced and terrified by its fairytale appearance, Annis enters with hope as well as trepidation. But the staff nurse (Mathers again) takes against her, and – as the years tick inexorably by – Annis’s spirit seems to be quashed. Thankfully, there are also some moments of joy, such as her tentative romance with fellow patient, William (Gavin Yule) – but is she too institutionalised to cope when, twenty years later, Castle Lennox finally closes down?

Castle Lennox, directed by Maria Oller, is a joint production between the Lyceum and Lung Ha, Scotland’s leading theatre company for learning disabled actors. It’s a superb example of how empowering and inclusive drama can be, a cleverly-woven narrative that both supports and enables its fine cast, as well as engaging a sold-out house. McCaffrey shines in the lead role, but fellow actors Yule, Emma Clark (Jo) and Nicola Tuxworth (Marie) also stand out, the latter clearly relishing her devilish character.

But, although the individuals are great, it’s the choral scenes that really make this piece. Movement director Janice Parker creates a bold dynamic, evoking the cheerful chaos of the laundry and Saturday tea parties, and the performers are all absolutely on their game, singing and dancing with gusto and aplomb. BSL interpreter Rachel Amey is nicely integrated into the production, subtly assuming the role of Annis’s dead mother, reassuring her daughter when she’s feeling low.

Karen Tennent’s nifty set places us first in an enchanted forest, where a grand gateway yields to an altogether more prosaic and clinical space, where white curtains segregate the patients from outsiders – and from each other. The costume design (by Alison Brown) also helps to locate us both in time and place, and I like the way Annis’s clothes become drabber as the institution wears her down.

All in all, Castle Lennox is a delight, well-deserving of the standing ovation it receives tonight.

4 stars

Susan Singfield

01/06/18

The Lyceum, Edinburgh

The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other by Peter Handke is a highly unusual production. Created and performed by a ‘Community Chorus of Edinburgh Residents,’ it features a cast of eighty-six non-professional actors and, watching it, I am filled with admiration for the way in which this complex piece has been so meticulously choreographed, the many costume changes serving to make me believe I am actually watching more than a hundred performers.

The play begins with the curtain rising to show a narrow band, wherein we become aware of feet passing restlessly to and fro – then the curtain opens upwards to show streams of people passing back and forth across a steeply raked stage, sometimes just a few at once, other times a veritable torrent of them, all racing to fulfil their imaginary deadlines. These are characters from – if you’ll forgive the pun – all walks of life. Office workers, business people, street cleaners and ramblers… waiters and prisoners, decorators and soldiers – indeed, the multiplicity of urban existence is written large and restlessly plays out as music and sound effects provide a stirring accompaniment.

Occasionally, something surreal moves across the stage – people struggle to push a gigantic stone sculpture on a wooden trolley, a mystic leads a magical floating contraption from one side to the other. There are elements of slapstick humour too: a hapless street cleaner attempts to brush a barrage of newspapers blowing in the wind; a paint-spattered decorator performs a strange wistful ballet with a ladder – and in one scene, an unmistakably Chaplinesque figure swings a familiar walking stick. There are more forbidding moments too. A highlight for me is the extended sequence, where groups of older actors shuffle inexorably into the wings – and the that ultimately waits for everyone…

There are virtually no words spoken in the entire production and much of what we’re shown here is open to personal interpretation. Why is one character trying to impersonate everyone he encounters? Is he intended to personify an actor at work? Why do characters from Greek mythology occasionally put in an appearance? I’m not really sure, but hey, I’m glad they’re there! At the play’s conclusion, the huge cast troop out and take their much-deserved bows – and we’re allowed a glimpse of the racks and racks of costumes ranged along the back of the stage, which they have utilised to create their various personae.

I emerge from the Lyceum feeling that I have just viewed something complex , exciting and pretty unique. Directors Wils Wilson and Janice Parker deserve huge plaudits for this. It’s a truly monumental undertaking and, as I can’t help remarking afterwards, something the like of which I’ve never seen in the theatre before. Which surely must be one of the strongest reasons for seeing it.

4 stars

Philip Caveney