“The past is another country, they do things differently there.” For Mair (sympathetically portrayed by singer/songwriter Lleuwen Steffan) this is a literal statement. At the opening of the play, she has returned from Brittany, where she is based with her Breton partner Loeiza (a bright Loeiza Beauvir), to the family farm in her native Wales for the funeral of her aunt. The practical and emotional consequences of this event lead her to question her identity and her vision of her place in the world. Based on a play by Welsh novelist Owen Martell and Breton actress Aziliz Bourgès, there is, as the title (The Salmon’s Daughter) suggests, a poetic, folktale quality to the story, which is powerfully present in the look and sound of the production.
Nadège Renard’s design suggests wide, sea-linked spaces: a circle of sand, in its centre a rock, at its peripheries a table lamp, a laptop. Behind this shore – a psychological as well as a physical threshold – stand a set of five tall, thin screens on to which Louise Rhoades-Brown’s videos project shifting shapes of sea surfaces and depths, suggestively complemented by Steve Shehan’s electronic score. The patterning of Ceri James’s lighting crisps up lighter moments (at a Breton spa, for instance) and gives opaque density to Mair’s solitary self-doubts and confusions.
The writing, by contrast, is prosaic. Developed by two companies, Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru and Teatr Piba from Brittany, the piece explains its ideas more than it dramatises them and so feels rather long and worthy. This is a shame – interpolations by a character called the Salmon Man (versatile Steeve Brudey) and short, surreal interludes with masked creatures suggest more was possible than has been realised, as does the secondary story of the French West Indian immigrant, Jean (Brudey, again). The six-strong cast is engaging and a tightening of pace by co-directors Thomas Cloarec and Sara Lloyd over the tour will eliminate some flaws in a show that tackles interesting questions. Translation (from Welsh, Breton and French) is by a whizzy app – it lacks that which is necessary to all drama: timing.
• Merch yr Eog/ Merc’h an Eog tours Wales, England and Brittany until 24 November
