The first of five in this season of A Play, a Pie and a Pint at the Traverse was this Welsh production. (For those not aware of the concept, PPP is a lunchtime performance where the audience first indulge in a pie and a drink, then go down to see a one act play, usually of around fifty minutes duration. Today I went with the haggis pie and pint of Stewart's Traverse Ale.)
Three women in the garden of a council house in South Wales. Daughter, mother, grandmother. The mother is slouched in an armchair, oblivious to the action around her, and comes to life only to deliver imagined monologues which are lyrical and, initially, oblique. The younger and older women bicker and fight over their relationship with each other and the near catatonic figure in their midst. As the drama unfolds the mother's speeches become more and more significant in revealing the awful secrets underlying the tensions.
To begin with I was concentrating on tuning in to the Welsh accented dialogue, and found I wasn't taking in much of the mother's information. From around half way through the importance of her testimony became more obvious. By then the lives of the others had begun to unfurl before us, the grandmother a 'functioning' alcoholic, the daughter a promiscuous, rebellious and troubled figure who indulged in fantasies that no longer fooled her elders. At the end the mother begins to show some signs of returning to the reality of the other two, and possibility of rapprochement is given to us.
Rich in metaphor and symbolism, a greater understanding of the play could be gained from analysis of the script. For such a short work there is a considerable depth of meaning and it would repay a chance to see it for a second time. You get a good idea of a quality of a work, not from the initial reaction, but from the conversations it provokes later. The four of us who had gone were still discussing the implications several hours later.
A good start to the season.
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