REVIEW: The Croft (Original Theatre Company)
The Croft – ★★½ – Fragmentary
Original Theatre Company25 – 28 June
Review by Rebecca Mahar
Billed as “a thriller” by Ali Milles, Original Theatre Company’s The Croft is an intriguing premise that, despite excellent performances, fails to fulfil any of its promises.
Set in a crofter’s hut in the Highland village of Coillie Ghille, the play opens with Enid (Liza Goddard), a crofter living in the time of the Highland Clearances, hearing the sounds of a mob approaching. She proclaims “Let them come. Let them all come!” before extinguishing her candle and vanishing. Her still-rocking chair is the only echo of her presence as we flash-forward to the present day, when Laura (Gracie Follows) and her older girlfriend Suzanne (Caroline Harker) arrive at the croft for a holiday.
Gracie Follows as Laura and Liza Goddard as Enid. Pic: Manuel Harlan.
It's an auspicious beginning, and what seems like an excellent setup for a transtemporal thriller, but the script lacks follow through. Its multiple stories build slowly, none managing to reach a fully-fleshed state or satisfying conclusion, and without any meaningful connection between Enid’s time and the present day/recent past. A good thriller doesn’t have to give its audience all the answers, and often they don’t, but The Croft fails to provide sufficient support to its mystery.
The play seems to be in crisis over its identity: is it a thrilling ghost story, centred on the women who have inhabited the croft over the centuries? Or is it an interpersonal drama that happens to be set in a slightly spooky old hut? Currently the latter is winning, and this crisis causes such fragmentation in the script as to rob either story of their potential for deep impact, creating parallel unfulfilled narratives rather than an integrated whole.
Gracie Follows as Laura and Caroline Parker as Suzanne. Pic: Manuel Harlan.
This is, as stated, despite excellent performances from the company. Newcomer Gracie Follows in particular is outstanding as Laura (and Eileen, in Enid’s timeline). Follows skilfully balances the demands of a difficult track, and her moment of song is a highlight of the show, featuring both her talent and a glimpse of what the production could have been if the script were stronger in its commitment to the interweaving of past and present.
Liza Goddard is wonderfully haunting as Enid, if in a part that is disappointingly smaller than the advertising for the show suggests. Caroline Harker and Gray O’Brien join Follows in excellent handling of two roles across different timelines in the play, with O’Brien making the most of some of its best lines.
Gracie Follows as Laura and Gray O'Brien as David as David. Pic: Manuel Harlan.
Alastair Whatley’s solid direction plays out on a beautifully detailed set by Adrian Linford. The action primarily takes place inside a unit representing the hut, full of knick-knacks and the accoutrements of rural life, with the ragged representation of a roof jutting into the air allowing for added texture in collaboration with lighting. The decision to set the hut on an angle, revealing the corners of a mirrored surface beneath, is a choice that speculatively has conceptual meaning, but is unfortunately unutilised and serves only to create distracting reflections of light.
Designed by Chris Davey, the lighting is precise and atmospheric, refreshingly without the overuse of fog, flawed only in the Enid scenes, where it has a tendency to be squint-worthy in its darkness. Davey’s use of colour and texture is particularly effective in developing the world of the play outwith the hut, keeping it present and real, but not distracting, when those parts of the set are not in direct use.
Gracie Follows as Laura and Caroline Parker as Suzanne. Pic: Manuel Harlan.
At the end of the day, this is a play that tries to do too much, and ends up doing too little. Nevertheless, The Croft is full of potential, and cries out for further development to solidify its identity and refine the story, or stories, it is trying to tell.
Running time: Approximately two hours with one interval
Liza Goddard as Enid. Pic: Manuel Harlan.
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