9  June  2022

A pool, part of the loch, ‘Crater Loch, the well of stories’, shrouded in mist. Coblaith is in the loch; is she a mermaid? Kazumi sits, watching, observing, studying. This is the setting for Joseph Wilde’s atmospheric one act play, which, like The Essex Serpent, has at its heart a mystery. Something is out there, but is it waiting to be found or is it merely summoned by the imagination? We’re told by the programme that this is a play about ownership of the land, but like many a well written play it has wriggled away from the playwright’s intentions and become more as the parts resonate differently with each audience; such is the fate of metaphor.

I found a play about guilt, of culture or perhaps cultures, of longing, of authority, of mysticism, of need, of attraction, of atonement and its sister retribution. ‘O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!’ So says Scott in Marmion. For the tangled web read ‘weeds’ and another layer is peeled away as deception – or is it self-deception? – is seen to be working itself out.

Coblaith (Carla Langley) has a sweetness of character that hides something darker. We feel her pretty dress and wet suit hide scales of some creature of the deep, or like a Siren she is luring Kazumi with sexual promise only to bare her fangs in triumph. In the same way her gentle Scottish lilt can turn in an instant into a club of profanity with which to beat his manhood. Again, perhaps she is the land and he or his masculinity is what is threatening her. Ownership is thus more than something merely legal. She seems to be teasing, using a verbal knife or will she use the real knife – his knife against himself, the knife his father used to skin a seal no less? The wet suit as seal skin metaphor is irresistible and we squirm in our seats.

Kazumi (Jamie Zubairi) a gentle voiced and respectful Japanese researcher would seem to be little threat. And yet, inevitably he is drawn to her. They swap dark folk tales, avenues into another parallel world. Violence springs from nowhere and yet we are not surprised. Is he going to sacrifice her or does he become her offering to the world behind the veil?

Director, Rebecca Atkinson-Lord, keeps us guessing, giving weight in equal measure to the various strands, which flow amongst the weeds. She maintains the tension in a play that for my liking is a little top heavy with story telling. Nonetheless the spell is never broken as the gloomy mystery works itself out.

It’s a piece of modern Gothick that works by stealth and clever use of mood as it reveals its fuliginous heart.

★★★★☆  Graham Wyles   10th June, 2022

Photo credit:  Tim Morozzo