This two women play by Sylvia Dow ends its three week tour of twelve Scotland venues at the hot and stuffily subterranean Traverse 2. Ironic perhaps, given that the setting is (supposedly) a breezy mist covered mountain top.
As solo hill walker Cath, played by Pauline Lockhart, in hiking boots and sporting an infeasible large rucksack stops for a chocolate break, she finds she is not alone. And yet there is no surprise, no shock as she chats with the tweed-clad and grey-streaked Nan Shepherd, played by Fletcher Mathers. At the heart of the problems with this production is the lack of drama, of shock, of revelation. The narrative is linear and pedestrian and with a minimal set you might just as well be overhearing two post menopausal woman moaning about life in a Tesco car park.
Screaming out for a device or effect at least that could pull this out of the ordinary, even a treadmill or step machine which might have created the necessary differentiation of Cath wheezing and exerting upwards and Nan floating effortlessly beside her?
This play is based on the writings of Nan Shepherd and her seminal work The Living Mountain, first published in 1977. A hundred page stream of consciousness love-letter to The Cairngorms, which wanders and dawdles and elevates the soul with its nature cure hypotheses and which elevated Nan Shepherd late in her life to visionary status at least amongst the hill-walking fraternity.
There are not many plays about Scottish hill walking and as an avid bagger myself (in the 282 club), I was really looking forward to this one. However, I did approach it with a degree of scepticism that it could be pulled off.
Unfortunately, there is not enough of Nan and far too much of Cath and altogether too much meaningless dialogue in this play and it simply does not convey the power, serenity and timelessness of the hills or the effort and fortitude and resilience required to commune with them.
So many sublime days in the hills with my perfectly silent companion Harry, a brown Lab, so at home in the hills, amongst the cotton grass and the bell heather and the bog myrtle, never meeting another soul, in communion with the rock and the sky. Just being.
How could a play ever portray that. It couldn’t.
Reviewer: Greg Holstead
Reviewed: 20th October 2023
North West End UK Rating: