Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Who We Become Part 1: The Moonshot Tape
Deep Flight Productions
Venue: Haldane Theatre at theSpace @ Surgeons' Hall
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
If you want to be a writer and get to speak to a famous writer from your own small town, of course you ask: how did growing up in this crappy place prepare you for becoming famous in the big city? That is the subtext to the questions Diane is invited to answer, but this wouldn’t be a Lanford Wilson play, acted by the stunning Margaret Curry, if the answers were straightforward.
Review
In this harrowing 1980s play by Pulitzer Prize winning author Lanford Wilson, Diane, a successful short story writer and heavy drinker, has come back to her home town after a long absence and is being interviewed by a shy young wannabe writer from her alma mater.
As Diane paces the room, refilling her vodka glass, we are treated to a masterclass in acting, or would be if we were able to extricate ourselves from the story which creeps into us and eventually shocks us to the core with a vision of horrid revenge. To begin with, Wilson’s writing gives us few clues about why Diane is an alcoholic. The beginning chapter of the play hides the devastation that follows. Director Mark Cirnigliaro and consulting producer Toni Bashinelli have been guided by the text to make the set look innocuous, a ‘vintage’ telephone and the tape recorder of the title, centre stage a quilt, symbol of homeliness, though there is no missing the large bottle of vodka. Something is lurking in the undergrowth, this impatient woman is hiding something.
Margaret Curry plays with a light hand, a lesser actor would exaggerate and wail, she does not need to, her craft is in the understatement, she knows that she has us in the palm of her hand. She devastates us, addressing the audience as if we were the gormless interviewer who has no idea at all ‘where Diane’s ideas come from’. Has the girl even read any of Diane’s stories I ask myself? Of course none of us have, we don’t know who we have in front of us. The fact that her inspiration comes ‘from people she knows’ possibly makes some of us feel uncomfortable. What secrets are our families hiding, and what if we wrote them down? Would we also have to leave our home town, be chucked out of our family?
The city of Mountain Grove in Missouri actually exists, Wilson lived in this state. I wonder whether he would be tarred and feathered for setting this play about hidden abuse and its consequences there (if he ever dared go back).
There are two other of Wilson’s short plays in the Fringe this season, also produced by Margaret Curry’s company and starring her and another actor. I am glad she has discovered these gems and brought them to life, they shine a light on truths we may think are gone and forgotten but are still utterly relevant.
