Latest news with #MullTheatre
Scotsman
25-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Night Waking: Mull Theatre's 'darkly funny' new drama based on the Hebrides-set novel by Sarah Moss
Set on a fictional Hebridean island, Sarah Moss's powerful 2011 novel Night Waking is to have its first stage adaptation at Mull Theatre this autumn, writes Joyce McMillan Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Motherhood and apple pie. It's the phrase we use for the things that our secular society still holds sacred, the things no politician dares to disparage; and still, people often talk of motherhood as the defining experience of a woman's life - the greatest, the most joyful and the most empowering. Nicola Jo Cully stars in Night Waking | Contributed The truth about motherhood, though, is often very different, particularly in an age when women often live far from traditional family support networks; and that's the situation faced by Anna, the central character in Sarah Moss's powerful 2011 novel Night Waking. Desperately trying to pursue her academic career as a social historian, but struggling to combine her work with the sheer hard labour of mothering two young sons, Anna faces a new life on the fictional Scottish island of Colsay, where her husband has both work and landowning family connections, while she - from a more ordinary class background - knows no-one. Her struggle to hold onto her sanity and identity under these pressures is Sarah Moss's theme; and it's one that tens of thousands of readers have found both compelling, and fiercely recognisable. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Now, though, Night Waking is to have its first stage adaptation, commissioned by Mull Theatre's artistic director Rebecca Atkinson-Lord from Irish-Mauritian writer Shireen Mula; and between them - with actress Nicola Jo Cully - they are looking forward to navigating the complexities of Anna's situation for audiences across Scotland. Contributed 'The book is so much about Anna's voice and experience,' says Atkinson-Lord, 'that we found in the end that this was only going to make sense as a monologue, a solo show. 'Anna's inner life is so complicated, though - with her experience as an isolated mother in the foreground, and then all the strands to do with her changing relationship with the island and its people, and her work which reflects on how people have coped with parenthood at different times in history - that the story still features a huge number of characters, including Anna's two very vividly drawn little boys, all of whom are played by Nicola Jo. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'It's going to be a two-hour play, with an interval, because there are so many layers to Anna's story; and as someone who - like a very high proportion of Mull's population now - came to live here from somewhere else, I'm completely fascinated by the way this story reflects on the experience of colonisation, and of losing the power to control your own fate. It's about how Anna - partly through her academic work - begins to understand that aspect of the island's history, and its impact on the people; while at the the same time recognising how the experience of motherhood has in some ways 'colonised' her own body, and shaken her sense of autonomy.' Shireen Mula | Helen Murray 'The book is also,' says Shireen Mula, 'a really beautiful and sometimes poetic piece of writing, with a strand of very dark comedy, and a really sharp wit. So although the play's underlying themes are so serious, there is also an element of real fun and enjoyment in the storytelling. 'It's also noticeable that readers do have very different responses to Anna as a character, with some reacting very strongly against her simply because her experiences and feelings challenge so many conventional assumptions about motherhood. So is there some kind of abuse here? Is she neglecting her children? Or is she just being honest about the complexity of a mother's feelings, in a way that's still quite unusual?' 'What we're hoping,' adds Atkinson-Lord, 'is that the play will be complex and rich enough speak to everyone in the audience - to those who have always lived here and those who have come here, as well as the audiences we encounter on tour. Night Waking really is a story about the complexity of all those relationships, and their deep historic roots; and we're thrilled to be bringing it to theatre audiences here, and across Scotland, this autumn.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad
The Herald Scotland
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Review: The Haunting of Agnes Gilfrey, Oran Mor, Glasgow
⭐⭐⭐⭐ A storm is brewing over Mull in Amy Conway's new comedy thriller that forms the latest offering from A Play, a Pie and a Pint's current season of lunchtime theatre. Agnes and her American TV actor husband James have arrived late at the old house where they are having a belated honeymoon. Greeted unexpectedly by housekeeper Mrs Carlin, Agnes and James are also seeking to escape other domestic pressures. Once things start going bump in the night, however, old ghosts making their presence felt see things spiral into a nightmare. Only when Agnes confronts a few demons does the storm calm. Shades of Inside Number 9's meticulously observed pastiches of hammy horror pulp fiction TV tropes abound in Katie Slater's production of Conway's script. This is the case from the creepy portrait of the former lady of the house Constance Laird resembling real life characters, to at one point having Manasa Tagica's Jack appearing to believe he is in a reality show. Then there is the way absolutely everyone in a 1970s thriller has a high-flying job in one creative industry or another. It is there most of all, however, in Mary Gapinski's larger than life embodiment of Mrs Carlin, whose deadly patter sounds purloined from a Victorian tombstone. Read more theatre reviews from Neil Cooper: Beyond such wilfully OTT archness there is some serious stuff at play here that says much about women, autonomy and the impending tick of the biological clock that has seen the female of the species too often presented as a mad woman in the attic of one sort or another. Played out on Fraser Lappin's pitch perfect depiction of a crumbling Highland pile and co-presented with Mull's arts centre An Tobar and Mull Theatre, Conway and Slater's construction sees Gapinski, Tagica and Sarah McCardie's Agnes having tremendous fun with all this. Conway's play nevertheless reclaims old myths in a deceptively subtle fashion to put women at the centre of this new spin on gothic fiction.
