We live in turbulent and deranged times. David Greig’s new play, Two Sisters, at the Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh, is almost a dare: sanity, balance, respect and human warmth – available here.
Refreshing sanity, humour and wit
The stage backdrop is literally a tatty seaside postcard with the edges curling with age. This setting is the holiday park where Emma and her sister Amy spent their childhood summers. Emma is now a corporate lawyer and expectant mother who has rented a caravan retreat to write a novel (she has given herself a week). Unfortunately for Emma’s plans, Amy turns up, fleeing her husband after he has discovered her serial affairs.
The sisters discover that the current caretaker is Lance, Amy’s teenage love.
Prior to the play, we are encouraged to get in the right mood by answering a short questionnaire about being 16. These are collected and read out at various points in the play by young actors who perform as a chorus. One’s teenage years is one of the main mediations of the play, but any evocation of nostalgia is not in the sense of remembering (or falsely remembering) a happy time. The play is about the intensity of experience of those years (heartbreak as much as happiness), the sense of infinite potential, the dreams for the future, and the way these echo into later life’s decisions and restrictions.
As often with Grieg, the popular arts are integral to the lives and psyche of his characters (In this case, Swedish films, clothes, pot, and especially music.)
During the play, Amy’s backstory is highlighted. A failed rock star, the world of opportunities she dreamed of during her affair with Lance turns into a life history that Amy sees as clichés – exciting clichés – but clichés nevertheless. Her great fulfilment never arrived. But perhaps even successful rock stars feel the same.
Shauna Macdonald's performance as Amy is suitably charismatic, sharp and caustic. while Jess Hardwick’s Emma ('the sensible one’) navigates perfectly the conflicts underneath her self control, to reveal her dreams and temptations. Erik Olssen as Lance captures the alternative lifestyle chill that would be calm in any storm. The Scandinavian tinge in his accent was ideal for this – though not exactly accurate for a Fifer…
The chorus of young actors perform as, basically, themselves: individuals that alternate between embarrassed, awkward, clumsy, and surprisingly skilled and graceful. In other words, perfect in the role of exemplifying what it is to be young.
The play is not revolutionary in form or subject: there is no Sturm und Drang. Neither is it sentimental or trivial. The play’s strengths are its refreshing sanity, humour and wit, and Greig’s trademark warmth and insight into what might be called the ‘ordinary life’. After all, as the audience questionnaire responses show, every one of us lives the cliches of Everyman. And each Everyman is unique and meaningful.
The stage backdrop is a paradox. Yes, the holiday postcard is old and faded. Yet the memories are not shabby or false. That young life was just as vivid and life-shaping as remembered.
