Theatre review: Little Forks/ Forca Beaga

NOT even in the outer reaches of the Edinburgh Fringe have I ever sat among an audience quite so scanty as the group of four who assembled at the CCA for the Gaelic language performance of Rebecca Joy Sharp’s Little Forks, also performed in English the previous evening.

Little Forks/ Forca Beaga - CCA, Glasgow

* * *

The show’s failure to attract an audience is certainly no reflection on the quality of Sharp’s powerful dramatic poem for two voices, which tells the story of a brother and sister revisiting, in reality or imagination, the house on a remote Argyll shore where they once spent holidays as children.

The poem is about layers of memory, both personal and historic.

Beyond a wood near the house lie the remains of an ancient iron-age dwelling; and between the house and the ruin, the place where the children once found, or killed, or otherwise abused a young deer.

There’s something here about human structures gradually dissolving back into nature, powerfully captured in the accompanying film by Alastair Cook, while co-director Neil Doherty creates a meditative, sometimes urgent soundscape.

It seems unlikely that this project’s clear distinction between English and Gaelic versions represents the most powerful way forward for Gaelic, a language that now needs not more separation, but reintegration into the hearts and minds of English-speaking audiences.

What Sharp has created is a grave, powerful and richly contemporary event, inspired by the special power of Scotland’s far western landscape, and brave enough to bring these two mighty languages alongside one another. It should be seen across Scotland, not least in those areas where Gaelic still lives, breathes, and has the power to change.