The New Current thought...

***** Five Stars

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Nothing can prepare you for award winning play writer Claire Urwin’s new play ‘Stitches‘ which is having its world premier at this years Edinburgh Fringe Festival. At times it is powerful and intense and at times she brings on such a sweetness and beauty it will leave you wanting more. Her amazing ability as a writing has given five talented actresses access to one of the most inventive and creative playwrights of their generation.

Stitches takes place after after the Firefloods have destroyed most of the earth and survivors are forced to become either Rafters or Floaters as they enter the ’Cinderage’. The play centres around a group of young women who are set to work in the Department of Flora and Fauna who are in mourning as one of their group, Izzy, has been promoted to the next phase. Liby, Web, Nettie & Bel spend sometime trying to cope with this loss until they get a new member of their group Amy. The new arrival brings with her a letter and throughout the rest of the scene there is growing tension between the group and the new girl. Even in this new world, this Cinderage, there is a class system between the Rafters and the Floaters which forms part of the tension between Bel and Nettie.

The play deals with the nature of their survival and what their role is in getting society back to the way it was. Urwin uses some very smart and gentle dialogue for her characters which creates such a warmth and innocence you honestly start to feel as though her characters have gone through this catastrophe. Some of the lines that the cast deliver are with such ease and wonderment their innocence shines though.

There is a darkness too in the play which is quiet and elusive but through some slips of the tongue and questions being asked, you get a real sense that all is not as good as the women think. This again is another aspect of the believability of Urwin’s script she has made these women prisoners who believe they are doing something that is their duty, names, family, history are all gone to them now and is left in the ‘before time’. Their duty is the three R’s; Research, Remember, & Rebuild.

You don’t find out anything about the people who have put them there to hear an real stories about people have moved beyond the final stage (Ministry of Biography) and at one point Nettie asks if is it daylight outside which makes you wonder if they are confined to the the smallness of the stage. This is no doubt down to director Rajiv Nathwani who seems to have a great understanding of the piece and was able to create a set and atmosphere that gave the play its first life.

All of the cast and Urwin are graduates from the University of Manchester and on watching this play if I could offer any advice to any person wanting to take up acting it would simply be to recommend the UMSU Drama Society.

Each member of the cast brings real life to the characters that they play in such a way it is guaranteed to make you smile and you almost get a feeling that there is a small part of their own personality on them. Some of their lines and rationale illustrate how lost they seem to be in the Cinderage, but how incredibly beautiful this play is. Vanessa Fogarty as Bel is simply marvellous on stage and seems to relish in this role. But this doesn’t take anything away from Caitlin, Jessica, Claire, & Elizabeth as an ensemble and they work perfectly together, and through most of the play I spent it leaned over totally lost in this whole production.

Without question Claire Urwin has written an intelligent, beautiful, and thought provoking play. You want to know more, and you want to follow these women and find out more about the cinderage and this new world.

‘Five actresses, one director, one award winning play write bring an original, beautiful, & thought provoking play to the Fringe…this needs to be seen!’