Bud Take the Wheel I Feel a Song Coming On

Bud Take The Wheel is the new play from Clara Brennan. Acclaimed in 2008 for her short play Rain, Brennan is a ferociously talented writer, here blending themes of violence, jealousy and generational conflict with a keen ear for the rhythms of familial dialogue. Her script flows effortlessly, and in creating an easy, varied pace, full of light and shade, director Hannah Price draws superb performances from a first-rate cast. The play opens in a striking tableau of rural domesticity, with milk pans and crockery hanging from two wooden ladders in centre stage. On these ladders sit Fran, ’16 going on 25’, and Liam, her father’s colleague and lodger, and – unknown to her parents – Fran’s quondam lover. Already, foreboding flickers under the surface as they discuss the impending return of Christian, Fran’s estranged brother. Christian’s reintroduction to his family is a catalyst that reopens ill-healed wounds festering in his eight-year absence. The welcome of his mother, played with a tender fragility by the entrancing Anna Kirke, is always tempered by her guilt at failing to prevent the beatings administered by a father unable to cope with a son who pitied him. Bud himself is a tangle of ferocious anger and bitter regret, and the first meeting between father and son is gripping, as the excellent pairing of Roger Ringrose and Gunnar Cauthery circle one another before erupting into violence. It is in the aftermath of this explosion, though, that the play really shines. Immediately the tone shifts to one of its most compelling scenes, as Christian and Fran gossip after their long separation. The relationship between brother and sister is the only one in the play not darkly coloured by resentment, and this sibling bond amid familial blood-letting is deeply touching. Yvonne Martin is outstanding as Fran, combining belligerent anger at her father with a wide-eyed adoration of her older brother. Bud Take The Wheel draws out its themes with a deft hand, grounded in compelling detail. Christian, discussing his plans for the renovation of the village paper mill, is clearly following in ancestral footsteps, but his thatcher father’s ancient craft has become Christian’s architectural ‘vernacular’. In such deliberately jarring contrasts, Brennan shows the collision of this isolated family with the incursions of modernity, and in tying grand ideas with domestic savagery she creates a play with an irresistible emotional punch. In the simple beauty of its language, the invention of its plotting, and the acuity of its perception, Bud Take The Wheel is Brennan’s coming of age as a truly significant voice in modern theatre.