Milly Sweeney | Bouquets & Brickbats

07/08/26

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Winner of the St Andrews Playwriting Award 2025, Milly Sweeney’s Water Colour focuses on the lives of two very different young people, who both go through bouts of depression. If that sounds off-putting, please don’t be misled, because this is an invigorating slice of theatre that moves kinetically through its rapidly-evolving story, cutting back and forth between the two characters, who move restlessly around Natalie Fern’s ingenious set design, which will eventually reveal some secrets.

Esme (Molly Geddes) is in her final year at the Glasgow College of Art and it only remains for her to submit one more painting in order to graduate. But she somehow feels unable to stir herself to undertake that final picture. Locked up alone in her student flat, friendless and far away from the nurturing powers of her mother, she is beginning to fall into a dark, enveloping world where she can no longer function.

Harris (Ryan J Mackay) would seem her polar opposite, a cheeky lad from the schemes, who has just moved into a flat with his best pal. He’s recently secured regular work as a dishwasher at a posh city restaurant, ruled over by a glowering Head Chef of the Gordon Ramsey persuasion. Harris is happy-go-lucky and ready to adapt to just about any situation.

But Harris and Esme are destined to cross paths one dark night, when Harris is simply wandering home from work and Esme has come to the end of her tether. Their interaction ignites a series of dramatic changes…

Director Sally Reid keeps the pace up to full throttle as the pair interact, while movement director Steve Laude-Russell ensures that the unfolding story is kept in restless motion throughout. Ross Brown’s sound design lends the piece an eerie, dreamlike quality and both performers are at the top of their game in their respective guises, handling their lead roles and a string of supporting characters with aplomb. I am genuinely thrown by a late-stage revelation as middle-class Esme finds therapy and heads towards redemption, while working-class Harris, unable to afford private health care, seems destined to plunge in the opposite direction. In the final section I find myself holding my breath as everything goes haywire.

It’s easy to see what caught the St Andrews’ judges’ eyes, and the heartfelt ovation from this audience is proof enough that Water Colour exerts a powerful hold. It’s an utterly compelling script and this fabulous production plays to its strengths. I for one can’t wait to see what Milly Sweeney comes up with next.

4.5 Stars

Philip Caveney

04/03/36

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Jack (Jonathan Watson) and Kathy (Maureen Carr) are recording an online chat with their granddaughter, Molly, providing her with some recollections she might be able to use in a school project that’s looking for ‘untold Scottish stories.’ Their separate reminiscences take them both back to the long hot summer of 1976, when they set off on their first ever holiday – two years after a rushed marriage, when Kathy fell unexpectedly pregnant.

In the van that Jack borrows from work, they drive to Campbeltown near the Mull of Kintyre. Jack has a hidden agenda. He’s been a rabid Beatles fan ever since he first heard the strains of Love Me Do, and now he’s nurturing a powerful compulsion to visit the secluded cottage where he knows his hero, Paul McCartney, has been spending much of his time since the world’s most famous band went their separate ways…

This first production in the new season of A Play, A Pie and a Pint, written by Milly Sweeney, is apparently based on a true story. It’s a lighthearted, whimsical piece, deriving much of its humour from the ways in which the memories of the two contributors differ in so many important aspects. The constant cross-cutting between them is the basis of the drama but the couple’s banter is not always as precise as it be and I’m left with the feeling that this piece could have benefitted from a little more rehearsal time.

There’s an attempt to draw comparisons between the break up of the Fab Four and the disintegration of Jack and Kathy’s relationship, a central premise that occasionally feels a little too forced for comfort – but I do like the fact that the play readily accepts that not every marriage is destined to last forever, a touch of realism so often lacking in drama.

Both Watson and Carr are familiar performers at PPP and both are appealing in their respective roles. Sally Reid directs the piece with a light touch and Heather Grace Currie’s simple set design successfully evokes the era. The image of a postcard – which is an important element in this supposedly true recollection – is occasionally illuminated in the background.

Someone’s Knockin’ on the Door provides a charming, if innocuous, opening to the new season – I do however occasionally find myself wishing for a little more grit in the telling.

3.4 stars

Philip Caveney