At just under an hour long, Iain Heggie’s gentle satire of life in Glasgow in the 18th century and the present day has a pleasing circular structure which neatly wraps up all the ends and doesn’t outstay its welcome.
With the dulcet chamber music of James Oswald (1710-1769) to set the tone, widowed lawyer Enoch Dalmellington sits at his desk trying to reconcile his accounts in impoverished times. His daughter Euphemia is a constant but unseen presence – she’s plain, she’s a rotten housekeeper and she keeps on turning away suitors who might, possibly, rescue them both from their current financial plight.
Heggie interweaves the fate of her latest wooer (made to walk the plank as punishment for his fervent antislavery views), her father’s speculative dealings with an unscrupulous tobacco merchant (riding high on profits from transatlantic trade) and the predictions of a local fortune teller (who can see what life will be like in 2009) to create an amusing monologue of resignation and adaptability. And though not yet quite word perfect, Callum Cuthbertson’s sometimes wistful Dalmellington, invests it all with an unhurried acceptance modified by parental concern as he tries to be both mother and father to his worrisome offspring.
Finborough
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