FringeReview Scotland 2024
Morag, You’re A Long Time Deid
Claire Love Wilson and Peter Lorenz, with An Tobar and Mull Theatre Frank Theater Vancouver
Genre: Multimedia, Musical Theatre
Venue: Beacon Arts Centre, Greenock
Festival: FringeReview Scotland
Low Down
An intriguing tale told with a multitude of ways of engaging with us. Tightly directed but loose enough to get folk up on their feet. The most impressive is the way that the sounds have an impact upon the telling of the tale.
Review
This is a labour of love that begins with granddaughter Sam in receipt of Grandmother Morag’s piano. The legacy is more than the instrument as the letter which accompanies the piano is filled with references to a country and a leid which is strange to the Canadian lugs of Sam. What follows is a quest that that has a queer ring to it in more ways than one. The sang across the seas is joined not just by the sangs across the generations but the hint of a relationship in Morag’s past that could have been far more than just a musical collaboration. This boldness from the past emboldens Sam to find her own place in the world.
It’s a beautiful concept and one that starts with merit but needs to produce sufficient clarity in its telling to take us all with it. Reimagining ceilidh theatre is bold and safe at the same time. It means that having people who will fill your stage and are willing to come onstage are needed otherwise it shall struggle for impact. The audience participation here works well and getting people up to the Canadian Ceilidh Dance is a wonderful way to enliven and enrich the experience for the audience. It worked really well – though is a risk.
The beginning of the piece which is all electronic loops and using the piano and its sound in quite a challenging manner makes the telling of the tale couched in a framework which feels difficult to square at first. But it delivers that feeling of this being fresh and new. It is about the ballads and the tradition but in a way that is going to take us off on a new direction.
That is important as the revelations and thoughts through which Sam goes is needed to be framed differently from what we would usually expect. It is refreshing and the idea of queerness being a historical continuum rather than some kind of newly discovered fad is massively important to people who have queer experiences. It is more than not being alone and more about visibility because in the past there was little by way of acceptance. You need to celebrate who you are now and note who were there before you.
Wilson is an engaging presence, a skilled storyteller who has a keen eye for the audience and how to draw them into the narrative and performance. Alongside her Sally Zori plays a number of roles which underscore the humour as well as highlight the twists and turns of the story; his grandfather in particular manages to give us the reticence of age and the embarrassment of talking.
It’s a heady mixture which brings to life the ideas and manages to deliver a unique perspective. Billed as a new experimental musical, there is plenty here to suggest it has a great deal to offer and develop. Right now, it feels a little incomplete but may be the springboard into new work rather than a series of new drafts. As a Scot, and a straight man, I would love to see this develop further. It has a truly important tale to tell and the people with the right degree of skill to challenge us further in developing our thinking and response to queerness today based upon their history of queerness of the past.
