A fascinating, and important story told with style.
📍Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
📅Fri 14 to Sat 15 Oct
💷 From £15.00
🕖 Evenings: 7.30pm
🕖 Running time (approx.): 1 hour 40 minutes (including interval)
✍️ Writers: Robbie Gordon & Jack Nurse
🎬 Director: Jack Nurse
🛠️ Designer: Becky Minto
🎼 Composers: VanIves
🎂 14+
🎭 Wheelchair Accessible Venue; Wheelchair Accessible Toilets; Audio Induction Loop
Storytelling is the lifeblood of cultural history: the means of both its creation, and perpetuation. If some histories are more interesting than others, too much detail often proves anathema to an audience’s interest. Thus, when Wonder Fools chanced upon the fascinating true story of four men from Prestonpans who went to fight in the International Brigades opposing Franco’s fascist coup in 1936, the challenge was set. The little known tale of valiant anti-fascist George Watters, and the three local men who journeyed with him into the jaws of death, was clearly important local history; but how to make an audience capturing war play with the resources of indie theatre?
The answer it transpires was to set the play in that nexus of local information exchange, known as the the pub. There amidst the empty glasses, and scattered patrons left at last orders on a mid-week open mic night in ‘the Pans’ the story was ripe for the telling. Four millennial friends, and their long suffering landlady span a very modern political spectrum, from unemployed Conservative, to disillusioned socialist. Into their highly topical banter (Truss and Hunt come out of things quite badly), wanders George’s ghost (Billy Mack), with a very large suitcase of memories to pass on.
Marshalled by their landlady (Rebekah Lumsden), the four friends played by Martin Donaghy, Robbie Gordon, Cristian Ortega, and Dylan Wood will unpack that case. What follows is a superb mix of drama, dance, and song, following George, Bill Dickson, Jimmy Kempton, and George Gilmour from mines to Spanish frontline, and — for some — back home. Critically, there’s enough detail through chorus-esque interventions from the ghost and from Lumsden’s directives to satisfy the historian, but sufficient drama to make proceedings more show than tell.
Co-writers Nurse & Gordon weave a pacey, affectionate, funny but unflinching tale of adventure and it’s shadow, tragedy. Song, and physical theatre are blended in with admirable honesty, used to further and deepen the storytelling without over-indulgence in the name of ‘art.’ So it is, the audience can wander from coal mine deeps, to the chaos of doomed encounters with an overwhelmingly superior foe.
If the show unmistakably wears its heart upon the left sleeve, then neither is it unaware of the costs of virtue. Is there a point, 549: Scots of the Spanish Civil War asks, where the cost of doing the ‘right thing’ is just too high? Can one person make a difference, or are they always doomed to impotence, or worse, self-deception?
Wonder fools seek to create work with, and for communities, and in this production there have achieved precisely that. Designer Becky Minto’s bar is a fine wee chameleon, turning from familiar boozer to barricade, through well marshalled, and finely sound-tracked set-pieces. Composer Vanives riffs on simply melodies, his motifs clean, simple, and evocative. There’s no gristle here, no time wasted to set-dressing, if the set must change, then that change is woven into the telling.
Perhaps the philosophical similarities betwixt 30’s adventurer and the millennial counterparts who play their roles are a touch neat: modern tory voter plays self-interested pay-day hunter, dispirited socially minded bar fly plays George, the man whose absolute belief shaped more than his own destiny. Maybe the ending is just a wee bit too tidy, but there’s no questioning the heart, or talent behind this super wee show. No pasarán indeed!
That said a 1 hour 40 minute show does need an interval, and in The QR’s opinion, it’s generally not negotiable. There were a couple of suitable points at which the action could have been divided, giving relief to those in need of the bathroom, some trade to the bar, and some circulation to the cramped legs of the tall. Yes, momentum is a valuable thing, but so is the comfort of the audience.
Nonetheless, this play’s core idea, that modern people are the rightful inheritors of the stories of our forebears, however removed in time, or personality, is so very important. Yes, the pace of modern life can strain, or even break social contracts between the generations, but never beyond repair. Stories like those of those 4 brave men stretch out from the past, and its thanks to ears like those of Wonder fools that they are told anew; and a contract renewed.
(All Photography Credit: wonderfools.org )
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