The Brenda Line, Pitlochry review - 'an important comment on our sexual culture'

Harry Mould’s debut play is both heartwarming and boldly comedic, writes Joyce McMillan

The Brenda Line, Pitlochry Festival Theatre ★★★★

Morag You’re A Long Time Deid, Zoo Southside, Edinburgh ★★★

The year is around 1980; and somewhere in small-town Scotland, veteran Samaritans volunteer Anne is settling in for a quiet night on the phones, dealing with the usual handful of distraught callers.

Fiona Bruce and Charlotte Grayson in The Brenda Line at Pitlochry PIC: Fraser Band

Anne isn’t expecting any help, on this shift; but in bounces Karen, fresh up from London to live in her mother’s old home town, and – at 18 – one of the youngest Samaritan volunteers in the country. Anne is used to coping with change, though; and all goes smoothly until Karen discovers the existence of The Brenda Line, a service once run by the Samaritans – but abolished in the 1980s – in which men who wanted to masturbate on the phone could ask for Brenda, and be put through to a volunteer who was willing to talk them through, and to befriend them.

As a young 1970s feminist, Karen is outraged at the idea of this service, calling it “unpaid prostitution”; and Harry Mould’s debut play The Brenda Line – playing in Pitlochry’s studio theatre, and based on Mould’s mother’s own experience as a young Samaritan 45 years ago – is a substantial piece of work on an important theme to do with the fast-changing landscape of our sexual culture, from post-Victorian repression through 60s sexual revolution, to 21st century judgmentalism.

In Ben Occhipinti’s gentle production, the play succeeds in striking a tone that is heartwarming in spirit, and boldly comic in exploring those tensions, yet also deeply serious about the huge human and political issues Anne and Karen face in their night’s work. Fiona Bruce and Charlotte Grayson deliver two rich and sometimes beautiful performances as very different women gradually forging a strong bond of comradeship; and if the play leaves many of the questions it raises tantalisingly open, it still represents an impressive first step, in what should be an interesting play-writing career.

Canadian theatre-maker Claire Love Wilson’s 75-minute show Morag You’re A Long Time Deid – currently on tour in Scotland – also tells a family story; but this time a slightly more distant one, of a grandmother who spent her early life an ocean away from Canada, and left her heart in the country of her birth.

Co-written with Wilson’s Austrian director Peter Lorenz, Morag You’re A Long Time Deid features two performers – Wilson and actor-musician Sally Lori – and a piano, often with its strings exposed; and it tells the tale of how Wilson acquired her grandmother Morag’s piano, sent to her by a woman in Scotland called Jessie after Morag’s death – a death never spoken of in the family because she took her own life, after brutal medical treatment for depression.

Morag You’re A Long Time Deid is a show full of imperfections, and takes a long time to articulate what seems obvious from the outset – that this is a tale of love between women, with which Wilson herself strongly identifies. There’s some awkward faffing around with jackets on coat hangers, to represent the different characters; and Wilson often seems more startled and amazed by her story that audiences are likely to be.

What’s fascinating, though, is the strong engagement with Scottish song, language and dance that Wilson weaves into her narrative, as she struggles to decipher Jessie’s original letter (written in strong Doric), remembers the Scots songs her grandmother sang, and grapples with the country-dance culture of a typical Canadian Scots club. There are elements of audience participation, and even a bit of a ceilidh atmosphere; and although this sometimes hesitant show tells us less about the history of gay women than it might, it still makes its point with great charm, and a quiet reflective energy that soothes the spirit, in strident times.

The Brenda Line in repertoire at Pitlochry Festival Theatre until 18 September. Morag You’re A Long Time Deid is on tour around Scotland until 10 September; for details see http://clairelovewilson.com/morag-youre-a-long-time-deid