Every One

I know that this blog is entitled Glasgow Theatre Blog, but when offered the opportunity to see the opening night of Jo Clifford’s new play, Every One, at the Lyceum in Edinburgh, I couldn’t resist. The play is a deeply personal one for Jo, about grief and family loss, and she was visibly nervous of how it would go down. It is a very moving play and I have never heard so many sniffles and blown noses in a theatre before, I was certainly tearful, as were those beside me. But Every One is not as depressing as all that. I found it in many ways a joyful play, focussing on the value of life whilst you have it, and that even small unappreciated moments, like doing the ironing, can be important when spent with those you love.

Jo shirks off what could be hopelessly melancholy and lugubrious by perforating the play with humour. The character of “Man”, or Death as we later learn, leaps onto the stage from amongst the audience, as he surely is in life, and delivers an onslaught of ironic and satirical humour that is terrifying in its reality. Death is a part of life, and confronts us, as the actor playing the role, Liam Brennan, confronts us with our own mortality with the aggressiveness of his delivery. I certainly felt cowed by his offhand listing of the comic physical failings of the human body and felt almost apologetic for having one. His performance enabled me to laugh at the concept of my own death, which is certainly an uncomfortable feeling, but I feel, an achievement: a victory against mortality.

Every One looks at grief from a different direction, from that of the deceased for those they leave behind. The performance of Kathryn Howden in the lead role of Mary was very touching as she learned to cope with her death and the loss of her family as she watched them grieve for her in her hospital bed. This play is not just about the subject matter, but about challenging theatrical form. The Lyceum is a very beautiful space, designed and decorated for purpose, and in the beginning of the play the characters introduce the auditorium almost as if it were a character in itself. But it wasn’t the performance space they were referencing, but the grand auditorium itself, where we, the audience sat. The Lyceum has a typical proscenium arch, directing your view like the borders of a television screen, but what was happening on this particular screen was inside out, allowing us, unexpectedly, to see out from the other side. We were voyeurs, looking on with Mary as she saw her family grieving through transparent mirrors.

After the play there was a small gathering in one of the function rooms and I got to talk to some of the people involved. The subject of grief is something that affects everyone, and it is very hard to talk about death, never mind to write or perform it. It is a sensitive subject, not least to Jo and her family who have also lost someone very important to them and many others. But Every One manages to unite people in their experiences of that most powerful of emotions, it is something that confronts us all and we in many ways, need to talk about it. We need to talk about it to make it more normal, so that it doesn’t almost choke us when we do have to discuss it. As the director, Mark Thomson said, “I don’t want to do things that aren’t worthwhile, this is worthwhile.” I think that every one in that room after the performance felt it, every one was thinking about loss, and thinking about life and those are uniting thoughts. Loss forces us to value what we do have. The final scene of the play was a dance, an ethereal, majestic and expressive dance, of women of all ages crossing the threshold and moving from that unsure space between the mirrors to whatever lies beyond. They weren’t hanging on any more, but gracefully and, more importantly, with hope, moving past life.

Every One is showing at the Lyceum until the April the 10th. http://www.lyceum.org.uk
Get more information about Jo and her plays at http://www.teatrodomundo.com/