A WRITER'S chance
encounter with a small but close knit community in the Scottish
Highlands was the inspiration for a play about what we believe in,
what we stand for and what we can change.
Fable tells the tale of
what happens when Blair, a man in his late 30s, meets J, a woman in
her mid 20s on the end of a pier.
The pier is at the end
of the road in a tiny village called Ardfern, which just happens to
be the same village which inspired the play in the first place.
The pair talk and get
to know each other and end up changing each other and their lives
forever.
Written by Alex Wright,
for his theatre company The Flanagan Collective, and co-produced by
Greenwich Theatre, it was first staged in 2014 and has since been
shown in venues around the UK including in Ardfern.
It can now be seen at
the Vault Festival in the Leake Street tunnels in Waterloo before it
heads to Adelaide, Australia and then to Greenwich Theatre at the end
of April.
“It was serendipitous
in the way it happened,” Alex tells me during a break from
rehearsals. “We were in Ardfern, a tiny village in the Scottish
Highlands, with another show we were touring.
“We went to the pub
after the show and during the evening, a man called Blair came in. He
came up to the bar, introduced himself and began quoting Rabbie Burns
at me.
“It turned out he was
the local tree surgeon and a poet, originally from Glasgow who wanted
to build log cabins.
“He was a wonderful
man, talked for much of the rest of the night and it was fascinating,
very entertaining – not least hearing about how he was about to go
to the Arctic to build these log cabins because he couldn’t do it
in Scotland.
“When I got back to
my digs in the small hours, I decided to write down what he’d said.
I then realised it could form the basis of a play.”
Combining storytelling,
music and performance, Fable is about our childhood dreams and what,
here and now, we are left with.
A two-hander, one of
the characters, is based on Blair, the other, J, is entirely
fictitious. J is a woman from Birmingham who has always wanted to be
an astronaut but because of a defect in the wall of her heart she
can’t fulfil her dream.
So she becomes a
physics teacher and imparts her enthusiasm for the solar system and
space to her students.
However, one day she
decides to take control of her life and answers an ad on a dating
site. She finds herself on the end of the pier with Blair, a man who
makes log cabins.
Although very different
characters, their meeting and subsequent discussion changes both of
them profoundly.
“It’s storytelling
at its most beautiful and with a wonderful score,” says Alex.
“It is about the push
and pull between the necessity of the modern world and how we find
our own place in it, what we are in control of and how we manage to
take stock of where we are and what we do about changing things.
“It’s also about
how obsessed we are about how busy we are all the time and how we try
and out-do each other by saying how busy we are.
“There was a
wonderful moment in the pub when Blair said to me ‘I wish everyone
would put that internet down’. It’s brilliant. And that’s the
thing - we should all put our phones down and sit and look at the sea
for a bit or talk to people a bit more.
“Both the characters
in the play help the other to shake off the shackles."
Since the show was
first made the company has been back to Ardfern to show the locals -
including Blair - the play.
“I was really worried
about him seeing it but it was great,” says Alex. “What was
amazing was that in the play the Blair character tells J how he went
to Canada, saw bears and swam in the sea to impress the girls.
"When we went back
to Ardfern and met Blair again, he told us that’s exactly what he
had done on a recent trip to Canada which was really weird!
“I think we owe him
quite a lot. In fact we feel quite connected to the village – it’s
a lovely community.
“This is the third
incarnation of the show we made originally and it’s really nice to
go back to it and make it again,” he adds.
“We are still
enjoying discovering stuff about it.
“It is the most
traditional show we have ever made so it will suit Greenwich and we
are really excited to be performing it there, not least because it's
a theatre that has helped us so much with it.
"But it also fits
the Vaults too because it’s very site specific. The Vaults is quite
a stark but beautiful space and is the kind of stage we are used to
rather than a traditional theatre setting.
"It's really
exciting to be here.
"Ultimately it’s
a very simple but magical story that leads the audience on a journey
that the characters go on," he adds.
“It’s nice to make
a piece of work about who and how we are. And what’s great is that
the story is still starting interesting conversations amongst the
audiences who see it.
“We are so excited to
see where it leads us next.”
Fable runs at the Vault
Festival, The Vaults, Leake Street, Waterloo, until February 7.
Tickets cost £12. Visit www.vaultfestival.com or call 020 7401 9603
for listings.
It is on at Greenwich
Theatre, Crooms Hill between April 26 and 30. Visit
www.greenwichtheatre.org.uk for tickets.
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