FringeReview Scotland 2025
Because We Said We Would
Fox and Hound Theatre Company
Venue: Theatre 118, Glasgow
Festival: FringeReview Scotland
Low Down
It’s 1976 and Jeannie and Tam meet in a barn somewhere in Scotland. They make the promise that every five years at the same time in the same place, they will meet up. And so, begins our exploration over 19 scenes as Jeannie and Tam navigate the town in which they were brought up, through school trying to find a place for themselves within their community until they land on a career. For Tam, that is music, much to the annoyance of his father, whilst for Jeanie it is finding herself where music means everything until a trauma casts an exceptionally long shadow. With singing now out her picture, she settles back home where she is comfortable, until her uncomfortableness overwhelms her.
Review
Dumfriesshire’s Fox & Hound Theatre Company have been in existence for at least a decade, and this is the first time that they have toured outside of their home area. The overwhelming feeling at the end of this subtle and tender piece is haste ye back.
Written by one of the actors, Helen Fox, it admirably tells the tale of a friendship and its up and down nature as both Jeanie and Tam, played by Codge Crawford, capture their vulnerability and strength. The tenderness f each towards the other does transcend the footlights as we get both playing their 7-year-old selves until they mature into their adult lives, without much of the confidence of naivete. This piece is anchored in the very strong understanding that they seem to share on stage. Fox plays Jeannie with subtlety and charm whilst Tam blunders his way through things but is always one step away from simply giving in to anything that Jeannie would ask him to do and it’s that tenderness that motors this.
Performed in front of a group of white boards upon which Crawford and Fox draw their backgrounds, the episodic nature of the piece is often interrupted as it begins to flow by these artistic decisions. Rather than a visual language to support the narrative, they often stop the flow of that narrative – we become ready for the revelation but have to wait to try and read what is written onstage. This is more prevalent towards the end as scenes begin to get shorter. There begins to be a lack of development of growing into the scene. Finding a better way of
Intimating that we had moved from one place to the next would have helped.
Direction felt a little uneven but with the way in which third characters are portrayed onstage a big plus.
There is, however. something really interesting about the way in which the final two scenes are delivered. It is testimony to the way in which both actors have delivered this that not only are emotionally exhausted, we too, have a little bit of a tear in our eye. Fox and Hound Theatre Company
This suggests that there is a little bit of a gem down in Dumfriesshire that we should all be allowed at some point to enjoy.
