Losing Alec - tour
Playwright - Peter Arnott
Director - Simon Sharkey
Company - Cumbernauld Theatre Company
Venue -Sept - 27 Oct 2001, seen at Village Theatre East Kilbride
Reviewer - Thelma Good
When people die memories of them can haunt the living. Alec is the departed.
But dear we discover isn't what his relatives would have called him in
this interesting but unbalanced play by Peter Arnott, first performed
in 1988 by the Tron Theatre.
Mae his wife isn't too upset at the funeral, but daughter Jeannie dissolves
all the time, while her brother Tam's moody, and at his side is ex-girl
friend Lizzie, a tender soul. Uncle Donald is the only one from Alec's
past who comes back to the house with them. Alec, Robert Carr,
we come to know not just from them, but from his sourmilk faced ghost,
given to overly portentous monologues. This old Labour politician did
have his moments, but paid the price of being rigid and cold even before
his death.
Mandy Matthews is convincing as his daughter Jeannie, so tightly
bound by duty you fear for her. Mae, Alec's wife, is a role which works
better for Anne Myatt in the 2nd half, when Mae gets to grips with
seeing Alec when no one else does. Stephen McCole's a fine Tam,
a young man struggling to find himself overshadowed by the Catholic father
who would make a fine Protestant. In a part which would be so easy to
get wrong, Stewart Preston as Donald, displays both his honesty
and weakness, and is so recognisable as the quiet man on the fringe. The
exchanges between these two and Carmen Pieraccini as a clear thinking
Lizzie are the best written of the play, as men and women try to reach
out across generations and the sexual divide.
Losing Alec is bleakly
comic at times with some good scenes, even though the text could have
done with renovation and tightening. The theme of the disillusioned socialist
works less well than the exploration of death, duty and dreadful relationships.
If you go with a friend there's a deal to provoke quite a discussion.
© Thelma Good 20 September 2001
