Áine King’s talent for character and dialogue can’t disguise the fact that Burning Bright is less a play, and more three independent monologues.
📍 Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
📅 7 – 11 March 2023
🕖 1:00pm
🕖 Running time: Approx 50 minutes
📖 Writer: Áine King
🎬 Director: Roxana Haines
🪑 Artistic Director: Jemima Levick
🛠️ Designers: Gemma Patchett & Jonny Scott
💡 Lighting Designer: Ross Nurney
💰 From £12 (without pie)
🎂 Parental Discretion
🎭 Wheelchair Accessible Venue, Wheelchair Accessible Toilets, Induction Loop#
Áine King’s Burning Bright, winner of the David MacLennan Award, named for the founder of A Play, A Pie, and A Pint, lands at The Traverse Theatre this week. Inspired by the climate crisis, the play takes the form of three monologues interwoven over the 50 minutes it runs, thematically but not remotely narratively connected.
Mo (Hannah Jarrett-Scott), crew on an exclusive Arctic cruise ship confronts a right-wing lunatic passenger, all whilst mourning a lost partner amidst an ecosystem melting towards death. Ash (Adam Buksh) has retreated into childhood memories of India, and of his days as an immigrant schoolkid in Scotland, all whilst his home comes under risk of flooding. Television Journalist Alex (Suzanne Magowan) is caught in the wildfire she came to report on, facing death, but still hoping any scoop won’t be usurped by her boss’s buxom blonde-haired protege.
The three strong cast are each excellent storytellers, able to inject their tales with character and urgency. Jarrett-Scott is immensely personable as always, gifted with the natural comedian’s timing and delivery. Buksh is all vulnerability, summoning up his inner child to walk the stage with no apparent effort. Magowan’s reporter is all too believable, world-worn but driven, doubting but never quitting.
The three stories themselves vary rather widely in tone, and content. Mo careers from misery to imminent threats of death, her antagonist a caricature and her adventures verging on farce. Ash’s on-stage nervous breakdown is a progression from threat to threat, switching tigers for ferociously bigoted school fellows with only a few moments of triumphant relief. Alex has the most by-the-numbers adventure, but she certainly sells her fiery inferno with style.
Whilst each grapples with a possible symptom of climate change (excuse an old scientist from avoiding absolutes), and of man’s inhumanity to nature, they really have little to say on the topic. That in itself is no necessary problem, except that there’s no other thread to hold the trio of stories together, and the resulting performance isn’t really a play. Or rather, Burning Bright is actually three plays happening simultaneously.
King certainly has a talent for creating distinct, fleshed out voices, and for concise, pacey narrative arcs nonetheless. It’s easy to see why the actors show such evident delight in their scripts, and its rich imagery of burning horses, and fishing-net strangled whales. However, no trick in the actor’s tool-bag can stitch their stories together to make a coherent whole.
Burning Bright is produced by A Play, A Pie, and A Pint at Òran Mór, and is presented in association with The Traverse Theatre. It will will run at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, until March 11th
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