THEATRE
Leviathan, Oran Mor, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
THREE STARS
Out of sight, a marauding cat keeps slaughtering fledging birds - much to the oath-spattered fury of Mavis (Siw Hughes) whose back garden is the setting for this first Play, Pie and Pint co-production with Welsh company Sherman Cymru. Out of sight, but ever-present in the minds of now-widowed Mavis, her mentally-fragile daughter Karen (Claire Cage) and bolshie grand-daughter Hannah (Gwawr Loader), are the predatory, feckless men who pounced on them, leaving them young, alone, pregnant. Three generations of women, regardless of their different life choices, repeating one history.
Does any kind of hope claim a welcome in this valley? Writer Matthew Trevannion allows occasional glimmers of wishful expectation to creep into the wrangling exchanges that pass for conversations between - well, not all three of them. Karen, slumped in a grotty armchair, is more or less locked in a moribund silence and when she does voice thoughts, it's in fey monologues over-wrought with poetical nods to Dylan Thomas - if the others hear these, they don't respond. Instead, they rail at each other for everything under the sun, the spilling over of resentments further fuelled by the blisteringly hot weather and countless beers. What really squeezes bitterness to the surface, however, is the sense of being trapped by poverty, of being bundled together in the limbo of a council house on the wrong side of the railway tracks while life - and clattering train-loads of travellers - passes them by. It's bleak, despite Trevannion's determination to find a gritty, resilient seam of humour in the situation. Mavis is definitely served up as a nippy sweetie, but at times the combination of brisk pace (appropriately encouraged by director Rachel O'Riordan) and Welsh accents renders the ripostes elusive.
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