Sunset
★★★★☆ Moving portrayal of a marriage
theSpace @ NiddryStreet (Venue 9): Fri 2 – Sat 10 Aug 2019
Review by Joy Watters
This one woman show at theSpace @ Niddry Street until Saturday only, is a thoroughly recognisable portrait of an older woman reflecting on the emotional roller coaster that constitutes her long marriage.
She, a middle-class grandmother, tells her story at sunset for this is a literal and metaphorical appraisal at the end of the day.
Three faces of Maggie Macleod in Sunset. Pic Arbery Productions
Maggie Macleod totally inhabits the role in a beautifully modulated performance, charting the relationship from tentative beginnings to her husband’s last breath.
Originally a short story by Martin Foreman, it was first adapted for the stage in 2013 and now has been revised in a Scots version for Arbery Productions. Foreman directs with honesty and a deftness of touch which pay dividends in terms of connecting with the audience.
Simply, we see the couple’s living room with their two chairs, his is empty and the table beside it upturned. The reason for the upset is slowly revealed.
particularly poignant
Macleod develops the character carefully recalling her naivety as a young thing and her transition to dutiful wife (the #MeToo generation is yet to come) before finally becoming her own woman. No longer will she be confined to the house but get out for work and play.
It is a warts-and-all account as the husband’s string of affairs is recounted and the woman tells of her resentment towards her children, blaming them for taking her freedom away.
Sunset is particularly poignant when it touches on the simple pleasure of companionship in the later stages of the couple’s marriage. The warring, the infidelity, the anger and the children are all gone and it should be the time for husband and wife to enjoy each other.
That time is cut short however, with the husband’s death.
Macleod utterly encapsulates the sense of grief and unfairness of a woman losing her lifetime partner – just when life was looking rosy.
Running time: one hour
theSpace @ NiddryStreet, Niddry Street, EH1 1TH (Venue 9)
Friday 2 – Saturday 10 August 2019
Daily (not Sun) 5.20pm.
Tickets and details: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/sunset
Company website: https://arberyproductions.co.uk
Facebook: @ArberyProductions
Twitter: @ArberyProdctns
ENDS
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