Traverse Theatre, 30 October 2007, and touring

The Pearlfisher.

SIXTY YEARS AGO the traveller people would journey throughout the Highlands and across to Ireland, living at a cautious remove from the rest of society but broadly tolerated. Today, much of the romance of the old lifestyle has gone and you’re as likely to find travellers rooted to one place in permanent caravans as wandering beneath the open skies.

In the two acts of The Pearlfisher, Lewis playwright Iain Finlay MacLeod juxtaposes the two eras, setting a nostalgic vision of an encampment in 1948, when a village girl falls in love with a pearl-fishing traveller, against a cynical portrait of a modern-day mobile home where thievery and opportunism have replaced ethical independence.

What’s apparent in both settings is that the call of the wild remains strong. In act one, Elspeth Brodie plays Jess, a village tearaway lured from her boyfriend by the promise of escape offered by the traveller life. For Jess, the pearls collected from the fresh-water stream by Ali (Philip Cairns) symbolise freedom from the prudish rules of post-war society.

Two generations later in the second act, granddaughter Jessie (Brodie again) also feels trapped although, ironically, she now needs to flee the cage of a grounded traveller community. She looks to her ailing grandmother (Anne Lacey) who, having lost none of her lust for the open road, holds onto the string of pearls as a symbol of her freedom.

In this way, The Pearlfisher is a cross between a folk ballad and an epic drama, but it’s a hybrid that serves neither form well. In a traditional folk story there would be far more serious consequences for Jess’s theft of the pearls (which she wouldn’t have so easily have handed back) and for the rejection of her community.

To be a successful epic, meanwhile, the play would need to have more resonance in its echoes across the decades. As it is, it is very hard to figure out MacLeod’s slow-burning purpose or to feel an emotional engagement with his stories.

Philip Howard’s production, his last for the Traverse Theatre after 11 years as artistic director, settles on a sober tone and sticks to it. From the unintentional homoeroticism of the early scenes to the accidental murder of Jess’s boyfriend, there is plenty going on but too little indication of where the narrative is trying to take us.

Although acted with commitment and strong in language and character, the play fails to declare its intentions. The combination of seriousness and uncertainty leaves us drained and deflated.

The Pearlfisher tours the Borders and Highlands & Islands in November

© Mark Fisher, 2007

Links

• Traverse Theatre Pearlfisher Page
• Mark Fisher’s Scottish Theatre Blog