‘To The Bone’ | By Isla Cowan
Pitlochry Festival Theatre Studio - 06/09/23
It was an opportunity to enjoy the premier of a new work by the brilliant Isla Cowan. Her writing creates work that challenges the audience and the performers. This direct and moving piece certainly did that. Set in a secluded rural cottage and with a cast of three, this challenges the audience to think about home, ownership, and loss. The writer, in her notes, spent time contemplating the bones of a house, the Oikos which refers to the three inseparable elements of ‘the household’ through family, family property and the house itself. Having left a family home from childhood to move to the Highlands this resonated with this reviewer. The new studio space fitted the play well, with a bare set and just a kitchen sink and table, behind which was a yellow crumbling wall with patches of mould. The three protagonists: Beth (Rachael McAllister), returning to reclaim her house from her partner Alf (Joseph Tweedale), and his girlfriend Vee (Trudy Ward). The house dominating her memories of the child they lost and her desire to erase that time of her life. The dynamics between them were perfectly executed and played, creating the eternal problems of modern life and how to move on. I was struck by the similarities with the new play by Peter Arnott in the main house. Both overshadowed by the loss of a child, and both seeing a troubled future. Except this piece was about the common folk, not the educated rich. All were flawed and not particularly likeable, but I think I preferred the rural cottage to the summer house on the hill.
