In Anne Downie's new play about emigration, independence and coming home, Maggie - a woman in her late 70s returning to Scotland after half a century in the US - ruminates on what it means to be away from home for most of your life. "Funny, when you look back from over there, it's kind of on freeze-frame. But everybody else fast forwards, nothing stays the same."
While this forms the play's core, it's also a pertinent observation for those of us seeing the redeveloped Byre Theatre for the first time. Once little more than a church hall kind of venue, with scones served at the interval, it has now been transformed into a slick and serious theatre, complete with opening ceremony presided over by Sean Connery and a first season of professional productions.
Professionalism is certainly what you get with this show. This is a hugely enjoyable evening: the pace falters at times but there are faultless performances from a strong cast, especially Maggie's four terrible sisters fighting over the money she has made abroad, and Eileen McCallum as Maggie. Her life in the US has long been the repository for their dreams, a fantastical counterpoint to their own disappointments; she too has only a dream of what life in Scotland might be like. She soon sees that the culture she left behind has moved on without her: when she first arrives she wants to taste Scottish dishes that her young niece has never heard of, and when the sisters take her on a night out, in one of the play's funniest scenes, it is to a local club to line dance.
The strongest aspects of the writing lie in its treatment of the reality of emigration and the devastating accuracy of the relationships between the five sisters. What works less well is the play's subtext about the dependence and independence of Scotland. Just as Maggie's move abroad turns out to have been anything but emancipating (she remains engaged in her mind to a man she left 50 years ago), so Scotland's political dependence is woven as a theme into the play. It sits uneasily with the much more engaging human drama of what it means to be sisters, especially across the miles.
Until August 11. Box office: 01334 475000
Byre Theatre
