Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Shake Rag Hollow
The Journey Company and New Light Theater Project
Genre: Drama, New Writing, Theatre
Venue: Assembly Rooms: Front Room
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
The story of Denise who, after serving 18 years in prison for her uncle’s murder, returns to her mother’s home in a small mountain town. Here she confronts the daughter she hasn’t seen since birth. Laurel, now a college freshman, was raised by her grandmother and harbours resentment towards her mother believing her to be responsible for the tragedy.
Struggling with memory loss from drugs and trauma, Denise begins to question her guilt after flashbacks whilst hiking Shake Rag Hollow. As buried secrets surface from the basement, the family must confront the past.
Review
We arrive to the gentle susurration of birds and crickets, immediately conjuring rural stillness. A voiceover from Uncle Sherman’s home-movie tour of the area punctuates the play – affectionate notes on the wildlife and rolling landscape in spring taking us away from the bustle of George St into an intense human drama. The story is set high on a mountain in southern Tennessee.
Arlene Hutton has crammed a huge story into just an hour which somehow never feels rushed. A little more breathing space might give moments time to land more fully, but as it is the writing is deft, nuanced, never heavy-handed and fits the magic Fringe hour. It is absorbing because we have to work, to wonder, to question – the story is revealed slowly, layer by layer.
Laurel (Sofia Ayral-Hutton) lives with her grandmother Pauline (Beth Links) in a remote cabin. Laurel’s mother Denise (Dana Brooke) has been in prison for 15 years for a terrible crime; her daughter has grown up in isolation, hating her mother without ever meeting her. When Denise turns up at the cabin, suitcase in hand, Laurel is confused and swings between hostility and desperately wanting answers to the gaps in her life from this stranger she knows to be her mother yet has never mothered her. Denise needs a place to stay and to complete the online Master’s degree in psychology – her dissertation is on making sense of memories. Her mother, Pauline, reluctantly offers her a few days stay and the scene is set for gradual connections, fragments of memory, questions and ultimately the truth behind Denise’s conviction and prison sentence.
Performances are exceptional across the board. Brooke’s Denise is taut with years of suppression; Links’ Pauline wears pragmatism like armour; Ayral-Hutton brings a beautifully judged naivety to Laurel, her gradual thawing convincing. The climax leaves me with a lump in my throat – not a common Fringe occurrence.
Direction by Eric Nightengale is smart and spare. Two chairs and a table create every location; scene transitions happen fluidly within the action, avoiding that dead air that can bleed energy from a piece.
This is naturalistic theatre at its best – intense, riveting, deeply moving. It’s also a reminder of the joy of good theatre-making: strong writing, compelling performances, and direction that inhabits the world of the play without ever stepping on its toes.
It may be set in Tennessee, but in this unassuming container on George Street, a too common painful story is played out. It deserves to be sold out for the rest of the run
