Theatre review: Thread; Assembly St Mark’s (Venue 175)

A CHURCH hall provides the site-specific location for the new play by Edinburgh-based Nutshell, whose Fringe First-winning Allotment makes a return to the festival this year.

Ostensibly, we are all guests at the annual Burntisland Beetle Drive, but after a brief bit of dice-shaking, it’s time to sit back and let the play get underway.

Our host for the evening is William (Stephen Docherty), ably assisted by Izzy (Mary Gapinski), aged 80 and 78 respectively. But soon the clock is turned back to the 1950s when William, Izzy and Joan (Claire Dargo) – William’s wife and Izzy’s best friend – were in the first flush of youth.

They make for an awkward trio, William wanting to get Joan by herself for a bit of serious “courting”, Joan wanting to rescue Izzy from loneliness. After William and Joan marry, the three share Christmases and holidays, and a few darker moments: there are secret desires, a request which can’t be granted. When Joan’s memory begins to fade, all three must adjust to a new way of being.

Jules Horne’s play, sensitively directed by Kate Nelson, explores gently but deftly the subject of ageing, one of several works on the Fringe this year to do so. It also explores the gap that life all too often creates between youthful hopes and their realisation.

The play’s sure-footed direction means that, despite frequent shifts backwards and forwards in time, we are never confused. The three highly able performers use the subtlest changes in movement or voice to convey a shift of decades. The only moment of uncertainty comes at the end, which feels abrupt and in need of further resolution.

Ultimately, the beetle drive scenario doesn’t feel integral to the drama. The thread which runs through it is to do with sewing: the teenage girls’ home-made swimming costumes, the wedding dress, the baby clothes, the holes which develop in William’s shirt as he struggles to cope with Joan’s dementia. This central “thread” provides a framework to look kindly but unflinchingly at a difficult subject.

Rating: ****

Until 26 August. Today 6:45pm and 8:15pm.