Jenny Agg, Theatre Record Young Theatre Critic award 2009.
Order hangs by a thread in Claire Urwin’s play. Bel, Liby, Web and Nettie are charged with remembering the world as it was “before the firefloods came”. And so in the Department of Flora and Fauna (“conscription’s three years but many do stay longer”) they methodically piece together impressions of what the world might have been like, recording their findings in the form of quilts. If only they could stitch their own fragile identities back together so easily. In her latest play, Claire Urwin offers us a post-apocalyptic future and in doing so, as in all good dystopias, manages to spotlight the fears present in, well, our present. Pangs of recognition should set in as the female conscripts spend their recesses gazing myopically at their “flaws” in tiny mirrors. And I challenge even Sarah Palin to sit through Stitches and not feel the slightest squirm of climate-change related anxiety as the conscripts describe their perma-fogged world. (Actually, any chance anyone could get Palin along? It could bring some much appreciated publicity to this talented troupe in an over-saturated Fringe market. She could even visit the Lothian NHS while she’s at it…) Likewise, the delicately wrought conflict between Bel (“the very very rich”) and Nettie (“the not quite so rich”) should register with a recession-logged audience like pinpricks on skin. This is not to say that Urwin’s play is a polemic. Far from it. Gently teased into dramaturgical life by director Rajiv Nathwani, the plays never shores itself up against any one character. Even posturing, upper-class Bel (Vanessa Fogarty) remains warm and engaging. This is in part down to the dexterity of Urwin’s writing- with timely interjections of comic relief- and in part a testament to Fogarty’s performance, which, frankly, could charm the proverbial pants off the birds in the proverbial trees. Occasionally moments of tension between characters lump together too stolidly, but you will forgive these if your eye is caught by the feral new girl Amy (Elisabeth Hopper) who says little but observes much. Stitches is a triumphant answer to those who wondered what Urwin would do next. The luxurious poetic language remains, as do some stunning monologues, but Stitches proves that Urwin is capable not just of writing character, but of playing her characters off against each other. Such is the enormous dramatic potential of the final moments of the play, as Amy’s presence- and the dawning realisation that she was one of those left behind while the earth burned- threatens to destroy everything the other conscripts have so painstakingly patchworked together, that it will surely have a life after the Fringe. Preferably with the welcome addition of a second act. In short, Stitches is a lyrical, meticulously performed swansong to today’s world, just filtered back to us through the acrid smog of tomorrow.
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