Theatre

Mrs Barbour’s Daughters, Tron, Glasgow

Mary Brennan, Four stars

November 1915, and the Glasgow Rent Strike – with Mary Barbour rallying thousands of women onto the streets – was defiantly standing its ground: profiteering landlords could not, would not, be allowed to use the war as a ploy to raise rents and so engineer evictions of sitting tenants.

November 2015, and 87 year old Mary (Anna Hepburn) is about to be evicted. Not for non-payment of rent, but because the building is due for demolition and she is the sole remaining occupant. Her defiance, however, is not rooted in political protest – well, yes, it is but more as an embittered echo of family fall-outs that centred on the charismatic Mrs Barbour and her influence on Mary’s older sister Grace.

Age has marooned Mary in her much-loved armchair, but it has left her tetchily dependent on her niece-cum-carer Joan (Libby McArthur) and prey to memories that come alive on-stage as flashbacks. It seems to Mary that her whole life has been a series of disappointments that can be laid at the door of Grace’s fervent allegiance to Mrs Barbour, and this is where AJ Taudevin’s one act – a highlight of last year’s A Play, A Pie and a Pint autumn season – burrows under the surface of historical fact to remind us that politics revolve around flesh and blood people.

The excited child that Hepburn brings girlishly alive just wants Grace to love her more than this banner-waving, speech-making stranger. There is no ‘bigger picture’ for Mary, ever. You can, because of the craft in the writing and the caringly nuanced performances, ponder the way folk can blind themselves to realities –political or personal – because of how the heart can way-lay the head and vice-versa.

This play, and the music that rises up through it, will touch your heart and head alike.