There’s lots to love about this show from the Wardrobe Ensemble, creators of Education, Education, Education. It’s in the way the four sisters (surname Pelican) represent their late mother in identical red dresses and take turns to maintain her haunting presence. It’s in the bursts of unexpected choreography to the beat of Grace Jones and in the fluid company spirit. You can see why the audience laps it up.
But the show’s devised origin remains perceptible and there are things that could be ironed out. It would be good, in particular, if it could settle on one theme. Yes, it’s about four sisters paying homage to their mother, but what is it trying to say?
Is it a commentary on the dissipating values of their mother’s Greenham Common generation? Where once there was idealism and class struggle, now there are four women who are inward-looking and solipsistic. It seems to be about that sometimes, but it’s also a quiet domestic drama about infertility. And at other times it’s a comedy of manners about the fallout from a disputed will (this is one of the strongest strands, but shouldn’t its cast of wounded inheritors be even more dysfunctional?).
For much of the play, it’s hard to know where Jesse Jones and Tom Brennan’s production is heading. It veers from one polished and fizzy scene to the next, delighting with a dance, a comedic exchange or an inventive twist, but never quite declares its purpose.
Each of the Pelican sisters carries her own personal burden, and their tight family bond is revealed while an assortment of lovers and other family members hover outside the sisterly circle. They are lively, physically adept performers, even if they lack the darkness and grit of a family-reunion drama such as Festen or the improvised private tragedies of Mike Leigh – territory the play seems to be pushing towards.
After a few more twists, the company does manage to tie up the competing strands with an ending about sisterly solidarity, and almost convinces the audience that was its intention all along.
At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 25 August.
