Theatre reviews: The Sailmaker | The Swansong

The Swansong, Oran Mor, Glasgow ***

The deindustrialisation of large parts Britain between the 1960s and the 1980s still often features in UK political debate, most often as a useful abstract term and convenient historical shorthand.

If you want to understand what that shift away from making and manufacturing meant in the deepest texture of human lives, though, don’t miss Alan Spence’s beautiful play Sailmaker. First seen at the Traverse in 1982, it’s a classic text of the time, still studied in Scottish schools, and now, after a shocking 35-year absence from our stages, it’s given a well-deserved touring revival by co-producers Ayr Gaiety and the Beacon, Greenock.

In Spence’s 80-minute memory play, set during his 1960s childhood, our hero Alec and his Dad Davie live alone together in their Govan tenement flat, following the death of Alec’s mother. The soon-to-be-demolished tenement is crumbling, and so is Davie’s life; once a skilled sailmaker on the Clyde, he now finds that skill no longer needed, and ekes out a living collecting debts around tenement doors.

Davie, though, is a memorably complex and poignant character, beautifully recreated here by Andy Clark. In a world of hard working-class men and strong sectarian loyalties – everyone in this Govan is a Rangers supporter – Davie is something of a dreamer, who read a lot in his youth, can quote Burns and Dickens, and wants education and a better life for bright young Alec.

He is ever more defeated, though, by the crumbling of his economic and social world, too fond of a drink and a bet. The poverty in which he and his son struggle – like his failure to keep a promise to repair the sails on Alec’s little model yacht – leads to rising tensions between them, as clever Alec moves towards university and Davie sinks further into depression, poverty and unresolved grief.

All of this is beautifully worked out in Liz Carruthers’s eloquent production, with Alexander Tait, as a poignant and thoughtful Alec, matching Andy Clark’s Davie every step of the way. Lewis Kerr and Paul J Corrigan provide a powerful counterpoint as Alec’s football-daft friend Ian and his father Billy, a more resilient pair who roll with the punches and leave for better times in oil-rich Aberdeen.

And if a slightly over-detailed domestic set robs the play of some of its timeless, epic quality, this powerful new production still pays full tribute to the magnificent poetic depth and emotional truth of Spence’s writing; and to the history it embodies, which scars and shapes us still.

In many ways, Even Nicol and Finn Anderson’s new A Play, a Pie and a Pint musical The Swansong is the aesthetic opposite of Spence’s Sailmaker; a show that glides over surfaces rather than delving deep into the social causes of human misery, and that shouts out its emotions in big, lush show numbers rather than finding it difficult to express them at all.

Loosely based on a radio play by David Greig, The Swansong tells the tale of Lydia, who has had a bad day, a bad week and a bad year – no details offered – and is now suicidal. Attempting to drown herself in an Edinburgh pond, she encounters a talking swan who persuades her to pause for a moment, and takes her for a night out on the town.

The show features some enjoyable light-touch dialogue, and a pair of engaging performances from Julia Murray as Lydia, and Paul McArthur as her feathered friend.

Mainly, though, it features big, loud songs about the individual experience of crisis and recovery that often seem to drown out the elements of the story that might give us reasons to care; in a show that still seems a long way from finding the right balance between the story it tells, and the kind of musical expression that would truly enhance that story, rather than overpowering it.

Sailmaker is at The Studio, Edinburgh, 18-21 March, and on tour to 25 March. The Swansong is at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 17-21 March, and the Gaiety Theatre, Ayr, 26-28 March.