by Peter Callaghan
A Scottish songbird lays down her guitar
And plucks at our heartstrings with her memoir
Preview performances serve a higher purpose than offering cheapskates like me the opportunity to see shows for the price of a pint of lager and a packet of crisps. Make that a pint of lager – it is Edinburgh. They put bums on seats and generate advance publicity; allow writers and directors to re-evaluate their material as it transfers from rehearsal room to the stage (something I found to my own cost during an early performance of Kidnapped at Cumbernauld Theatre when director Ed Robson reworked a five-page duologue into a three page monologue); but, more importantly, they give performers a chance to feel more rooted in their performance prior to the arrival of sharp-pencilled critics. Careful, an hour-long autobiographical one-woman show about “a wee girl from Lanark” with a big heart of gold performed by Scottish singer-songwriter Horse McDonald, will benefit on all three fronts.
Growing up in a small community in Scotland is no easy task. Growing up gay in a small community in Scotland is a challenge which the indefatigable Anneka Rice would find nigh on impossible to surmount. From playground taunts about her name “She-he-na” and broken bottles being thrust against her girlfriend’s throat to talk of electroconvulsive therapy and threats of gender reassignment by medical staff unfamiliar with the concept of patient confidentiality, it’s little wonder that Horse adopted a careful approach to life and love. Added to that an unsavoury childhood incident with a strange man in a dark close, a silence bordering on suffocation from loving but distant parents who passed away within weeks of one another and a career-threatening throat operation as she was about to release her debut album The Same Sky, it’s nothing short of miraculous that Horse not only writes and sings like an angel but also met a real-life angel in the form of her partner and soul mate Alanna whom she married in her home town of Lanark in 2013.
Given the harrowing subject matter you’d be forgiven for reaching for the razor blades, but writer Lynn Ferguson and director Maggie Kinloch have infused proceedings with enough light and shade to ward off a spike in calls to the Samaritans – though it’s a close run thing. What saves Careful from descending into the doldrums is a sprinkling of harsh but humorous reflections on gender stereotyping such as being forced to wear a flowery blouse and a pair of American tan tights to the school disco as the boys lined up against one side of the assembly room and the girls lined up opposite in preparation for an ironic whirl of the Gay Gordons; Horse’s natural warmth and sincerity, which more than made up for her obvious discomfort at appearing on stage sans guitar, mic and song (she paused frequently and lengthily as she read from discretely placed crib sheets and fleeted far too often between armchair and stool); and the life-affirming moral-cum-warning that even in our darkest days we should never lose hope, but neither should we hide who we really are for if we do life-like love might pass us by.
- REVIEW: Orphans @ Edinburgh King’s Theatre ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - 13th April 2022
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- REVIEW: Sheila’s Island @ Edinburgh King’s Theatre - 2nd March 2022