North Edinburgh Arts Centre, and touring 2006

Random Accomplice's Something Wicked

ANYONE WHO’S been to a funeral will know how hilarity hangs on the tail of tragedy. With every outpouring of emotion comes a repressed giggle, every attempt at decorum a scurrilous joke. To laugh in the face of adversity is a better survival strategy than buckling under the senselessness of it all.

It is with this awareness of the light and the shade that ‘Something Wicked’ this way comes. Devised by the company, it’s a brisk comedy about three sharp-tongued sisters as they prepare for their mother’s funeral. Jumping backwards and forwards in time, it paints a picture of their childhood, their sibling rivalries and their belief that together they have dark supernatural powers.

Reminiscent of Des Dillon’s ‘Six Black Candles’ – a raucous comedy in which six sisters gather to cast a black magic spell on an errant husband – it portrays both the camaraderie and the antagonism, fuelled by a contrary mix of religion and superstition, that binds a close-knit family.

Here the most powerful spell is not one created by the sisters – who achieve little more than bringing on a snow shower and scaring off boys – but that which is cast over the family by their mother, a bitter, demoralising woman who passed on her own disappointments in life by undermining her daughters.

The conflict at the heart of the play is that, behind all the funeral trappings – the black dresses, the buffet and the sense of occasion – the three sisters had no love for their mother. Not only that, but they were instrumental in the speediness of her demise.

This conflict is also the source of the black comedy. Outwardly they’re in mourning, but in private they’re calculating their inheritance, plotting how to make their grief look sexually attractive (“we’re not cursed, just single”) and squabbling as only sisters can do.

Johnny McKnight’s lively production has the strengths and weaknesses of devised drama. In its favour is a free-flowing structure that allows extra laughs from, for example, some unexpected audience participation. On the down side are some uncertainties of pace.

But the acting by Angela Darcy, Toni Frutin and Mary Gapinski is strong, the atmosphere warm-hearted, and, although it’s not the greatest show you’ll ever see, it’s enjoyably throwaway.

(Something Wicked can be seen at the Universal Hall, Findhorn, on 21 October, and Birnam Arts Centre, Dunkeld, on 28 October).

© Mark Fisher, 2006

Links

• Random Accomplice