Perth Theatre, Perth, 12 September 2009, and touring

The Steamie Poster

PEOPLE SOMETIMES say the reason Tony Roper’s wash-house comedy works so well – and in Alison Peebles’ main stage revival it works very well indeed – is because of its nostalgia.

They suggest there’s something soft-centred about the way it harks back to the 1950s before the close-knit communities of working-class Glasgow had been broken up by slum clearances. Audiences, they believe, love the sentimental myth about an era when people looked out for each other and nobody was ever lonely.

But The Steamie is more subtle than that. Even as it evokes the solidarity of a group of women doing the laundry one Hogmanay evening – joining in, at one point, with a song sung by the entire wash-house – it presents the figure of the aging Mrs Culfeathers who harks back to an earlier time still.

As her younger friends point out, her reminiscences of summer days on Glasgow Green – a poetic vision of billowing sheets and happy chatter – conveniently overlook the misery of getting the washing done in winter.

Neither does Roper gloss over the toughness of the women’s lives in the world of the play. He makes clear that, whatever the spirit of camaraderie, the steamie is a place of hard work. He purposefully sets the play at a time when laundrettes were about to take over and women were full of wonder at the idea of machines that could relieve them from their drudgery.

Yes, he flags up the atomisation that would follow when families moved, full of hope, to new towns such as Drumchapel, but he is also decidedly ambivalent about the lives they would leave behind.

In other words, even with the added sentimentality of the Hogmanay setting, it isn’t possible to view the play as a pure nostalgia fest. It works, more directly, because of the brilliance of Roper’s dialogue and characterisation. Not only is it very funny, but it makes us feel like eavesdroppers on a conversation that was never intended for our ears.

There is nothing ironic or knowing about the women – even Magrit, the most cynical and hard-bitten of the four – rather, they are open and unguarded, free to speak their minds. As a result, they frequently let their conversation drift into the surreal, usually without realising it, which adds to the comedy and creates a sense of women using the imagination to escape from dull reality.

Demonstrating a firm grasp of Roper’s Glaswegian rhythms, the actors perform with tremendous honesty and energy; Julie Austin making an imposing Magrit, Maureen Carr a credulous Dolly, Kay Gallie a proud Mrs Culfeathers, and Jacqueline Hughes a benign Doreen, not forgetting David McGowan as the increasingly inebriated Andy.

With crisp and clean acoustic arrangements of Dave Anderson’s songs by musical supervisor Andrew Panton, it’s as joyful and hilarious a show as it ever was.

The Steamie is at Perth Theatre until 26 September, and plays at Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, from 16-21 November 2009.

© Mark Fisher, 2009

Links

• Mark Fisher’s Scottish Theatre Blog