Written and Performed by Raymond Wilson

Directed by Fiona Mackinnon

The wisdom of the plants is an eternal gift that we have continually failed to learn from. As some of the world’s most ancient creatures, they have time and again adapted and found ways to both survive and to provide. Not sure you can say the same about us.

Tapping into their archaic power, Raymond Wilson’s I Hope Your Flowers Bloom makes a Fringe debut at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, one which is rich in respect for the semiotically imaginative manipulation of our chlorophyll-fuelled friends. But while Wilson’s words may punctuate the air with Latin names and facts, the contemporary, and agonisingly tangible tale of self-love and relationships, with ourselves, others and nature, has been elevated to staggeringly beautiful standards: pruned, trimmed, nurtured, and sculpted into something gorgeous.

Feeling confined within the concrete jungle of Glasgow, I Hope Your Flowers Bloom is a semi-biographical account flittering between botany and romantic obsession which finds Wilson attempting to re-construct and unpack themselves in a post-pandemic Scotland. To re-establish this lost connection with the natural world around us and how it ties into masculinity, and the eroded relationship the working-class of Scotland has with the lush greenery which is so often tied into our nationalist pride. And what better way to communicate all of this, than with a love story?

Meeting Flo, a young woman who shares this penchant for the outdoors, but embodying the lifestyle to a more severe degree, the pair steadily form a relationship. Kind of, but not entirely so. Wilson plants so much of themselves into Flo, or rather, the idea of her. But as Flo fades in and out of his life, so too does his passion for nature, for life, and anything. It’s remarkably open and truthful for Wilson, where they don’t always come over as the healthiest but as the dissection of their masculinity changes and grows, it rounds out into a superbly honest narrative.

We were fortunate to cover the production’s debut last year as a part of the Village Storytelling – but to feel the urgency and the control in Wilson’s words is incomparable to the streamed performance. Wilson pours themselves into every syllable: their diction and projection perfect. The weight carries heavier to the audience, its impact sitting in the mind as the flow of relevance envelopes more tightly and profoundly.

Momentum is injected into the production, though still limited given the tone of delivery and inclusion of set elements. It’s an improvement from the debut last year, where Wilson’s movement felt more bedded and contained, but here the spoken word is accompanied by mesmeric flow, both in Wilson’s movement with Fiona Mackinnon’s direction and the shifting of cubes (designed by James Johnson with Maria Macdonald’s lighting) which form aspects of the Scottish wilderness. There’s still a sense of self-consciousness in the direction, as Wilson gradually opens themselves up to the audience, initially more reserved and ‘covering’ themselves before finally flourishing.

These sewn seeds of spoken word flourish into something sensitive and touching. Wilson conveys the highest respect and enjoyment for their artform and performance, becoming an absolute pleasure to watch evolve and express themselves to the gaze of the audience. Bedded, and having time to grow and flower, the tricky weeds and roots of the original production have all been cropped and cultivated, making I Hope Your Flowers Bloom a whimsically superb piece of storytelling theatre: simply gorgeous.