‘Castle Lennox a fine production by any standard, led by a powerful, heartfelt, and nuanced performance from Emma McCaffrey‘
📍 Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh
📅 30 March to 1 April 2023
🕖 Evenings, 7.30pm | Matinee, Sat 2.30pm
🕖 Running time: 75 minutes (without interval)
🖊️ Writer: Linda McLean
🎼 Composer: Michael John McCarthy
🎬 Director: Maria Oller
🎬 Associate Director: Fiona Mackinnon
⚒️ Set Designer: Karen Tennent
🪡 Costume Designer: Alison Brown
💡 Lighting Designer: Simon Wilkinson
🔊 Sound Designer & Engineer: Calum Paterson
🩰 Movement Director: Janice Parker
🎼 Arranger & Musical Director: David Paul Jones
🎂 Parental Discretion
🎭 Wheelchair Accessible Venue, Wheelchair Accessible Toilets, Audio Induction Loop
🎭 All performances BSL interpreted; Captioned Satuday 1 April, 7:30pm
Lung Ha Theatre Company return to the stage with Linda McLean’s Castle Lennox, following Annis (Emma McCaffrey), as she negotiates life as an autistic teenager in 1969 and thereafter. Remanded into the dubious care of the Glasgow Corporation’s Lennox Castle Hospital, then Scotland’s largest institution for those with learning disabilities, her future does not appear bright.
Inspired by the true history of an organisation which, when closed in 2002, had endured decades of criticism of its dehumanising, cramped conditions and abusive staff, the play could easily be a horror story. Instead, it’s a testament to those who survived with their souls bruised but intact. Those who lived rich, complex lives despite a regime which viewed them as unfit for society.
It’s a wonderful undertaking, and a fine production by any standard. Castle Lennox is a tragicomedic story bursting with heart, and inspiring without being saccharine. McCaffrey leads the story with a powerful, nuanced and sympathetic performance. She is more than ably assisted by a cast who bring the world of the Castle to thrilling life, friends and rivals, sneering doctors, and punitive nursing. However McCarthy has the linchpin role, one she carries off with honesty, and barrels of stage presence.
Fletcher Mathers turns as Annis’s stepmother, a heartless senior nurse, and nasty laundress could descend into pantomime villainhood. Instead, with admirable restraint, she is all too believably awful. Kevin Lennon as Doctor in charge (when not playing the guitar) might be less flagrantly horrible, but he offers patrician disdain and quasi-eugenic philosophies with odious flair.
Composer Michael John McCarthy and on-stage Arranger & Musical Director David Paul Jones conspire to soundtrack proceedings with a dynamic song-book and soundscape. Music and theatre reach their peak when Annis speaks with her dead mother. McLean and Director Maria Oller pull a master-stroke when pulling BSL interpreter Rachel Amey briefly inside the drama to wordlessly embody her dead parent. Here, and through the whole play, is a layering of songs, hopeful and heartbroken, motifs which follow the story through the long years towards a final liberation.
Karen Tennent’s set is an elegant framework of wooden trusses, encased in a suggestion of mysterious woodland. Like the dramatics it’s polished, parsimonious and well-conceived. With only a handful of props it morphs from dorm to dancehall, doctor’s office to bus-stop.
The years pass, Annis finding allies, and a life beyond the designs of their carers, be it love in the shape of William (a truly delightful Gavin Yule), or allyship in old friend, and a newly qualified nurse played with vim and sensitivity by Kirsty Eila McIntyre (when not playing the fiddle). About them, fellow members of the Lung Ha Theatre Company Ensemble create a panoply of fully-formed characters to walk the castle’s halls. It’s they who create a landscape of song, and self-created myth in answer to the system’s inhumanity, an act of defiance as natural as breathing. Emma Clark’s sweetly-voiced Jo, and Nicola Tuxworth’s utterly sassy Marie are particularly memorable. Bravo!
This review would be very long indeed were it to now highlight every excellent performance in Castle Lennox, but Director Oller makes full use of this talented bunch, and not one fails to thrive in the spotlight. The choral work is magical, the comic quips well-timed and laugh out loud funny, the joy of ‘Cake-Saturday’ is as palpable as the disgust at the diet on offer every other day of the week. Yuk-yuk indeed! Further enhancing matters, Movement Director Janice Parker also enjoys huge success in making Castle Lennox anything but a static environment. This is a show with pace in more ways than one.
Often, and rightly, work examing the lot of those traditionally discriminated against in society is weighed towards tragedy, but not so here. Whilst never denying the harsh truths of retrograde care, Castle Lennox holds to hope. The world outside of institutional care was, and is scary for many individuals, particularly those taught to deny their true selves for fear of punishment. However, Linda McLean and Lung Ha are speaking loud and clear – they are singing out – that society could be, and can be a place where the full divergence of humanity can find freedom. All it takes is genuine honest to goodness, reciprocal, mutually enriching and beautiful allyship. I cannot think of anyway this tremendous production could be improved.
Castle Lennox plays the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh from 30 March to 1st April 2023. It is a Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh and Lung Ha Theatre Company co-production.
By
By
