On Saturday afternoon, October 19th, an interested crowd gathered in Corrie Hall for a play staged by Nutshell Theatre – and were provided with papers for a Beetle Drive. For those who remember, this was a form of simple Bingo, the winner being the first to roll a six and complete a rudimentary beetle. The play opened with this game, conducted by a Master of Ceremonies who retained his professional touch and yet was perceptibly weary, as were his wife and daughter – or young helper, or lover, as the reminiscences demanded. Almost the only prop was a hinged sewing box with many compartments, a notional link to the threads of the story.
The play was created through collaboration with people of 65 or more in Fife, who shared memories and reminiscences of their earlier days. Their stories, telescoped together into the emotional history of three related people, built into a rich mixture of love, fun, misunderstanding and pathos.
Theatre ‘in the round’ at such close quarters is incredibly difficult to do. There is no proscenium arch to frame a picture in which the actors create a different world. They are never more than a few metres away, allowing the watchers to share the deeply personal experiences of their memories and fantasies. On Saturday, the three characters shifted in their identity according to what was being remembered or imagined – an incredibly demanding task. Stephen Docherty as William, the husband, father, lover and Master of Ceremonies, rose to the challenge with absolute authority.
With never a trace of ‘performance’, he was totally honest and open to what was happening, and every flicker of expression on his face was vulnerable, putting up no defence or self-protection. Nicola Jo Cully and Gowan Calder were the more actively dramatic characters, often tossed in the rough waters of jealousy and betrayal and love, and it was sometimes difficult to hit the needed high notes in an audience setting that was as intimate as a suburban sitting room.