Theatre review: Homecoming Leith Festival

Published on Thursday 11 June 2009 10:14

*** THERE'S a certain uncomfortable familiarity about playwright Alistair Rutherford's Homecoming. Sitting there, just the three of you, over a celebration that should be shared with a crowd.

The house is immaculate in the way only a Scottish housewife can achieve – there's enough food to feed entire populations of small countries and all those little, unchanging traditions are waiting, ready to be repeated yet again.

For Rutherford's small family, it looks set to be just another Hogmanay, like the last 15 before it. A mysterious first footer in town, however, has other ideas.

But before he can cross the threshold, protagonist Harry must first find his bearings in a Leith that has changed beyond all recognition since his departure a decade and a half before.

As Homecoming was commissioned as a play for the Leith Festival this year and is set in the present, it takes Harry all of five minutes to hit some major tram diversions on Leith Walk and find himself down the back streets of EH6. Taking a wry, affectionate look at the area and its people, Rutherford's warm script betrays the genuine fondness he has for his own birthplace.

Through Harry, played with world-weary melancholy by local amateur actor Michael Mills, he explores all the alleys of his childhood, throwing in a few characters that all Leithers can identify with.

In particular, Lorraine McCann's homely, optimistic Meg, the sort of Leith matriarch that has spent the past thousand years keeping the home fires burning for men far from home on the port's fishing boats and trading vessels. Fretting for her lost son, she tests the patience of long-suffering couple Sam (Allan Scott-Douglas) and Angie (Debbie Cannon).

Yet just as Harry is prey to diversions on his way home, so is Rutherford, the script taking meandering sidetracks into nostalgia so thick it clings to the production like treacle.

While the cast do an admirable job of tackling the witty, well written script and good direction makes the most of the small South Leith Parish Church Hall venue, the play's structure and evident plot holes sap dramatic tension from the final act.

Many of the elements of the play's structure, characters talking directly to the audience for instance, feel like they would work better in a book or on a screen.

It's almost as if the script doesn't quite trust the actors to do their job of emoting the story and backs up their actions with lots of description. At one point, Angie says pointedly of Harry to the audience: "You've got to ask why he left in the first place?", suggesting that the question should be answered by the play. Yet the audience never learns why Harry left, instead they learn far too much about what he got up to while away in a strange mea culpa towards the end of the final act with a bizarre twist that had very little bearing on anything that had preceded it. But then, perhaps it's a question that Rutherford might be trying to answer for himself.

Your Review: 'Something that you can identify with'

Rob Williams, 18, student, Abbeyhill: "Yeah, it was interesting. I don't think I really got the end, I was a bit confused. There was a bit at the beginning when the brothers meet that was good, but even then, it was a bit contrived. The rest of it was good, though. It was funny and there were some really entertaining moments. The mother really reminded me of my mum, the way she repeats stories over and over."

Tam Scott, 48, delivery driver, Ferry Road: "You could really see it was written by a local. It's good to come along to something that you can identify with. It was really funny too. I agree with what they said about Leith Links. I don't think we always notice or look after what we have in the back yard."

Jessie Reid, 70, retired, Lochend: "There was so much in the play that triggered so many fond memories. Playing out about Leith with my friends and it's true about oranges just at Christmas. And of course, every woman of my age in Edinburgh danced with Sean Connery and got their milk from him. It was a delightful show."