The trick to writing a monologue is finding a reason for a character to speak. If they are alone, what motivates them to address us? Katherine Parkinson has a novel solution. Making her playwriting debut as part of a BBC Arts first-time playwrights scheme, the IT Crowd and Humans actor takes us into an artist’s studio where three models of different generations are posing. Sharing the stage, but not the same timeframe, they speak out of embarrassment. Their words spill forth to fill the void.
John, the portraitist, remains unseen and unheard; staring, observing, silent. Like the audience, he looks on voyeuristically. In the same way that people share their secrets with a stranger on a train, a friendly shopkeeper or a professional therapist, so Luke, Cassandra and Mary cannot stop themselves saying what is on their minds. “Nobody’s ever looked at me as much as you do,” says Mary, the oldest of the three, as if the silent scrutiny makes her more exposed, more compelled to give an honest account of herself.
It is a smart trick and, despite some tonal uncertainty in Sarah Bedi’s good-looking production, Parkinson creates three credible characters. Hayley Jayne Standing’s Mary is a single mum and former punk with an unhappy family history that she cannot quite brush aside. She is likable, chatty and good-spirited.
Gamely stripping off, James Alexandrou as Luke is a painter and decorator as well as an expectant father whose blokeish exterior covers a good heart and a sensitive love of colour. Grace Hogg-Robinson as Cassandra, the youngest of the three, has a shrewd understanding of the neediness and vulnerability of an aspiring actor who finds make-believe more comforting that the truth. Clinging on to the compliments of a director who tells her she has a “telegenic face”, she is susceptible to flattery and sexually forthcoming in a way that only makes her seem more in need of protection.
Slowly, Sitting reveals itself to be more than just three character studies. Taking a leaf from the monologue plays of Brian Friel and Mark O’Rowe, Parkinson delicately reveals connections that, by the end, give the play a wistful emotional weight.
- At the Gilded Balloon Teviot, Edinburgh, until 26 August. Box office: 0131-226 0000.
- Read all our Edinburgh festival reviews.
