EIF Review: The Outrun

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The Outrun, based on the memoir of the same name, by Amy Liptrot, follows The Woman (Isis Hainsworth) from a childhood on Orkney to the bright lights of London, a decade of addiction-fueled self-abuse, and back again.

It’s a story of swift descent and long, grinding recovery, immersed in an abstracted world of choral chant and projected imagery by Director Vicky Featherstone and Writer/Adapter Stef Smith.

A compelling Hainsworth excels in the central role, a bright, young everywoman with a thirst for experience. Unremarkable – or unremarked on – during bacchanalian university days in Edinburgh, her need to drink follows her home. Despite the love of her good friend (Ros Watt) and the dour support of her crofter father (Paul Brennan), London and excess sing a siren song.

Before her fall, The Woman wonders aloud why there are seagulls in Edinburgh, miles from the sea, eating from bins when they could be at the shore. In many respect, The Outrun is an answer to her question.

This is a remarkable undertaking, an audacious attempt to reach inside a life to spill out all of its magnificent, sensational, terrible, and mundane reality on stage. Composer Luke Sutherland and Musical Director Michael Henry wrap the drama in polyphonic tones in the key of earth, sea, sky, nightclub, support group, hate, love, lust, and eventually, peace. Video Designer Lewis den Hertog paints the stage with rocky landscapes, sea spray, pixels and bones, yet another external expression of The Woman’s internal life.

Featherstone choreographs quite a dance on stage, creating a genuine sense of motion through time and space on the Church Hill’s compact stage. Moments of still contemplation or conversation are contrasted with maelstroms of dancing, romancing and convulsing.

Once entered into its endgame, ‘The Outrun’ finds its action through a deeper exploration of The Woman’s internal struggles. She finds a mirror in the savage shores of Papa Westray where she secludes herself in pursuit of recovery.

The quality of this production is exceptional in every respect, from sound balance to lighting, subtle but remarkable set design, to the least movement.

Smith’s adaptation is smart and concise. For a show so dependent upon exposition, there’s as much showing, and as little telling as possible. Scenes and dialogue are stripped to the bone, but not of texture, much being said with the fewest possible words.

Thanks to invested performances and genuine chemistry throughout the cast, the result is some remarkable storytelling. Hainsworth’s tour-de-force aside, Brennan’s understated quiet, Seamus Dillane’s cheeky, but sensitive Boy, and Ros Watt’s big-hearted but vulnerable Friend particularly impress.

The ending, for my money, is just a little rushed. Given this is a memoir, there is no surprise when the woman ultimately survives, but a little more time spent thriving and not just surviving might avert a sense of the play’s sudden termination.

Otherwise, however, ‘The Outrun’ is a sensational theatrical achievement.

‘The Outrun’ is a Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh production.

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