I feel as though a door has been opened in my head and I don’t know how to close it. So says anguished mother Maddy (as in McCann, jests a father in a swing park in an ill-judged but tone-setting remark) after learning that her trusting mother-in-law Morven allowed a so-called kind stranger to accompany her little boy Joshua to a toilet in a supermarket cafe while she juggled with her purse and two trayfuls of food at the till.

As the door of fear, doubt and suspicion creaks slowly open into full-blown panic and terror that her newly potty-trained three-year-old might have been ogled at in a cubicle, forced to touch a stranger’s private parts, been touched himself or ‒ worse ‒ sexually penetrated, the door of trust is slammed shut. Firstly, in the face of her shocked mother-in-law, then her alienated husband Rory and finally a series of unsuspecting male figures who by their very presence shake the once-firm foundations of her world like a snow globe.

Penned by experienced dramaturg and literary agent Frances Poet in her first full-length play which she described in The National as an “offering to the world, instead of writing to brief”, and directed by Zinnie Harris whose adaptation of Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros recently wowed audiences at the Lyceum, Gut asks more questions than it answers ‒ which is no bad thing, for the questions raised are ones which swirl in the head of most adults, parents or not.

Who can we trust to look after our children? How much can we trust them? And if, like Morven, our answers are no one and not much, how much damage do we inflict by being overprotective? Damage to our children who are deprived freedom? Damage to ourselves who are wracked with fear and suspicion?

The four-strong cast led by Kirsty Stuart and Peter Collins as the anxious parents, supported by Lorraine McIntosh as a youthful grandmother and George Anton as a rogues gallery of suspect males, handle the material beautifully: natural and nuanced, giving weight to the unsaid by a pause, a glance, a beat.

The direction is bold and unsettling: a series of homely scenes lacerated by the sudden appearance of an enigmatic figure whose words and deeds can be interpreted as either innocent or malevolent. And despite the miscalculated appearance of a certain character towards the end of the play, the writing is both gripping and thought-provoking.

Should we trust our gut instinct? The jury’s out. But with regard to Frances Poet’s first full-length play produced by the Traverse in association with National Theatre of Scotland, a Meg Ryan yes, yes, yes!

Peter Callaghan
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