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The Steamie.
Part of the 2003 Pitlochry Festival Theatre Season for full details of the theatre & season here .

Playwright - Tony Roper.
Songs - Dave Anderson
Director - John Buick.
Set Designer - Trevor Coe.
Costume Designer - Jennifer Melville.
Lighting Designer - Mark Pritchard.
Voice Coach - Janet De Vigne.
Piano Music - John Scrimger.
Company - Pitlochry Theatre Company .
Cast - here .
Venue - Pitlochry Theatre e-mail booking 01796 484626.
Dates and Times - here .
Run Time - 2 hours 30 mins including 15 mins interval.
Reviewer - Thelma Good.

The Galloway's mince is done a treat.

The Steamie - Pitlochry Festival Theatre Company. Angela Darcy - Doreen, Ann Scott Jones - Magrit, Janet Michael - Dolly, Clare Richards - Mrs Culfeathers , and Steven McNicoll - Andy. © Keith Brame 2003.

This play and its songs have a warm place in the heart of Scottish Theatre. It's set in a Glasgow wash-house or Steamie on Hogmanay sometime in the 1950's. As the washing gets done, four married women sing, laugh and cry their way through the last working evening of that year with a little help from the increasingly not so handy Andy. The Steamie captures a woman's way of washing and a way of life already changing.

Doreen's the youngest of them, she's not got a pram to wheel the washing, no wains. But she has a little job and has her hands full, keeping house and clothes clean. She dreams of Drumchapel and a house* with a garden and a host of luxuries. A bath, a telephone, a washing machine, a fridge not to mention the TV are all essentials to us but she and the other women in the Steamie have none of them. It's because she's not got a washing machine she's down there with Magrit, Dolly and Mrs Culfeathers, all in their stalls doing the laundry by hand.

It's a play whose five parts demand strong performances which the Pitlochry cast deliver. Angela Darcy gives Doreen, a filled to the brim optimism and youth, the fresh water contrast to the other ones. Magrit, Ann Scott Jones, has grit and smeddum*, nattily turbaned, these days she'd be middle management at least. Dolly is that bit older a happy soul who talks, and talks and talks but there's no harm in her. Janet Michael, playing this role for the fifth time in her life, is a Dolly and an actress to treasure, reducing the audience to helpless laughter as she really gets into talking to Doreen in Drumchapel or gets increasingly worried about the bath she took on holiday at Glasgow's Whiteinch Steamie.

The Steamie - Pitlochry Festival Theatre Company. Clare Richards - Mrs Culfeathers and Janet Michael - Dolly, © Keith Brame 2003.

Though these women didn't go far, no chance or cash for that, when they tramp blankets to get them clean the poverty of their knowledge of the world is still a shock. The Roses of Picardy they can sing but they don't know where Picardy is or the song's reference to the first world war dead in the trenches. Mrs Culfeathers is the oldest, yet to begin with she's almost ignored. She been there since one in the afternoon and in Clare Richard's accurately bone weary playing, you can see there's not much spirit left. The only man is Andy and Steven McNicoll entertains as the increasing less than upright attendant with a raffish charm and a fine singing voice.

For many Roper's play is a fabulous, heart moving play, and the audience certainly felt that way on the opening night after seeing this on the mark production, directed by John Buick. The Galloway's mince is done a treat, as are all the cherished exchanges, and the patter's pure Glasgow. Though we laugh with them, their suggested futures where women do the wash at home isn't enticing. Mrs Culfeather probably dies alone and unvisited by her sons, Dolly will always be content, Magrit will never be what she is capable of, and young Doreen may well live to see her children and grandchildren suffer nightmarish unemployment and debt in what was her dream, Drumchapel*.

Trevor Roper's The Steamie celebrates our ability to be good in defeat, living as the underdog, as Scots and as women. Half a century on and 16 years since the play was written, the way we work may have changed. But it has a bitter aftertaste for women are still trying to cram two or three jobs into one day and now as Mrs Culfeathers predicted,"Friendly wi' a lot of people is gonnae be impossible."
© Thelma Good 22 May 2003 - Published on EdinburghGuide.com
*in Glasgow a house meant a place of your own, flat or semidetached it was still a house.
*smeddum - Scots for good sense, intelligence.
*Drumchapel - one of the council housing schemes built in the 1950's and 60's to house people moved out of the Glasgow slums.
The text with the songs is published in Scot-Free a Collection of Scottish plays by Nick Hern.
Cast:
Dolly - Janet Michael.
Magrit - Ann Scott Jones.
Doreen - Angela Darcy
Mrs Culfeathers - Clare Richards
Andy - Steven McNicoll.


The Steamie 's Dates & times of Performances:- .
May Thursday 22nd May, 2pm, Thursday 22nd May, 8pm, Monday 26th May, 8pm, Saturday 31st May, 8pm.
June, Tuesday 3rd 8pm, Wednesday 4th June, 2pm, Friday 6th June, 8pm, Wednesday 11th June, 8pm, Saturday 14th June, 2pm, Wednesday 18th June, 8pm, Saturday 21st June, 8pm, Friday 27th June, 8pm.
July Wednesday 2nd July, 8pm, Saturday 5th July, 2pm, Wednesday 9th July, 8pm, Saturday 12th July, 8pm, Wednesday 16th July, 2pm, Thursday 24th July, 8pm, Monday 28th July, 8pm.
August Saturday 2nd August, 2pm, Tuesday 5th August, 8pm, Saturday 9th August, 8pm Tuesday 12th August, 8pm, Wednesday 13th August, 2pm, Monday 18th August, 8pm Saturday 23rd August, 2pm, Thursday 28th August, 8pm.
September Tuesday 2nd September, 8pm, Wednesday 3rd September, 2pm, Monday 8th September, 8pm, Tuesday 16th September, 8pm, Wednesday 17th September, 2pm, Monday 22nd September, 8pm, Saturday 27th September, 2pm.
October Friday 3rd October, 8pm, Monday 6th October, 8pm, Saturday 11th October, 2pm, Wednesday 15th October, 8pm, and final performance on Saturday 18th October, 8pm.

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