In the hustle and bustle of everyday life it is all too easy to forget who you are and where you’ve come from. The home that sheltered you. The family that shaped you.
Hand Me Down, the second of this evening's performances of Platform 18 New Work Award winners, is an intimate reveal from 9 female members of a Glasgow family.
The room is alight with a party buzz, as can only be expected with a gaggle of Glasgow lassies. Laughter and love perfumes the air. Short cakes are munched and tea cups are tinkled.
But all is not so feather light. There is a gigantic emotional wallop that accompanies reunion and reflection. On times past and lost. Of people past and lost.
It sneaks up on you in this show. Dizzy and drunk on the colour and magnificence of these wonderful women, you don’t catch glimpse of what is coming until it is too late and your heart swells up in longing for what is your own.
It does take some time to get into. The beginning is perhaps a little overstretched and the very natural tone of it does tend to weigh it down in parts. The humour is mostly hopelessly bland, but that is perhaps a lot of the charm of these people.
These are real people and not perfect by any wild stretch of the imagination. And, frankly, I don’t think we’d want them any other way.
Platform 18: The Arches New Work Award ran at the Traverse 20 to 23 May with How Soon Is Nigh?