Lorna Irvine reviews a 'touching, hilarious and not a little bit chilling' debut.
Jenny Knotts, fresh from Arches Live! success with Opera Breve's beautiful One Day All Of This Will Be Long Ago, is the first recipient of the David MacLennan Award for new writing. On the strength of this, her first play for PPP, she's a force to be reckoned with.
Margaret (Kay Gallie), a childlike and vulnerable old lady, sits with Post-It notes stuck to her walls to aid her failing memory. She is joined in the sparse living room by her acerbic wheelchair-bound sister and "best friend” Agnes (Ann Scott Jones, wonderful), a woman who is tiring of the responsibility of looking after her and determined to move her out to a residential home.
A meditation on loyalty, ageing and the frustration that comes with illness ensues, with keenly observed dialogue and behaviour (racing to the obituary pages in a newspaper, bickering over TV) but what could have been overly twee or clichéd is instead a startling poetic narrative which doesn't follow obvious routes.
Only the middle segment of the play falters, when a young man, little more than a prop, enters the house and upsets the equilibrium, but in the main it is solid. The moments of clarity and wicked humour are what make Margaret so heart-rending, but Agnes is ultimately the more interesting character: the sister you couldn't see far enough.
An assured PPP debut: touching, hilarious and not a little bit chilling. Knotts has a great future ahead of her- expect great things.
Run ended.
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