Written by David Greig

Directed by Wils Wilson

Tickets from £16.00

Nostalgia is a notoriously dangerous drug: addictive, encompassing, distracting, but oh-so nourishing. It clouds judgements and fractures our ability to move from the past and adapt – entirely apparent in David Greig’s new play Two Sisters, in a co-production with Malmö Stadsteater and the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh.

Amy and Emma, sisters, return to a (now) aged caravan park along the Fife coast where they spent their (mainly Amy) teenage years dancing, underage drinking, and getting up to the shared experiences audiences can relate to. Directed by Wils Wilson, Two Sisters focuses on the individual lives and relationship between Amy, the more traditionally ‘dysfunctional’ elder sister running from her marriage, and Emma who (seemingly) has their life more together and originally wanted to visit the holiday park as an escape to finish writing their book (or novella, or series of short stories, she isn’t sure yet) before Amy gatecrashes.

They are not alone here, followed by a chorus of young performers who have the part of in-story teenagers staying at the park and a more metaphorical representation of the audience – reading out anecdotes and memories we share with the venue upon entering through a questionnaire. A canny idea, the implementation comes over as severely distracting in moments, almost entirely throwing off the flow of the storytelling. Individually, some of the performers bring terrific humour and warmth to the production, with some great deliveries, but their ultimate purpose as a chorus feels defunct and altogether inconsequential as they wander the stage, climbing around the walls, and altogether cluttering other, potentially more dramatic, moments.

Deliberately ‘stagey’, Lisbeth Burian’s sets are decaying and fracturing, the wallpapers peeling away as if hastily plastered up to ensure an image of being held together without providing any structural support whatsoever. The cast spend so long harkening back to their past lives under Colin Grenfell’s sepia-tinted lighting, shackling themselves to that glorious, often misremembered summer. In fitting with the names of the caravans (Paradise, Valhalla), there is an inescapable sense of limbo or purgatory, an unwillingness to venture forth with lives led or an ardent desire to return to the safety of youthful ignorance. While Two Sisters initially appears remarkably predictable in areas, the conceptual foundations spark something honest and engaging. But this does not seem like Greig’s story to tell. And it drastically suffers because of that.

One of Scotland’s most prolific and celebrated creatives (the incredible Prudencia Hart springs to mind), since taking the position of the Lyceum’s Artistic Director, Greig’s tenure has, until now, veered away from his own plays, either directing or adapting for the Edinburgh theatre instead. This makes Two Sisters his first original piece in the Edinburgh venue, and the dangerous allure of nostalgia takes on an indulgent persona. Amy and Emma, especially Amy, come over as written by a man. It feeds back into the broken flow of manufactured language and expression which weakens the character, despite Shauna Macdonald’s strong stage presence and attempts to salvage the role with some canny timing and raw emotion.

Equally, Jess Hardwick’s Emma brings an earnest chemistry with Macdonald, the play at its best when the two simply talk things over. But the character comes over as remarkably predictable in their growing attraction to the final member of the cast – Erik Olsson’s Lance, the DJ and groundsman for the park who has been working there since she and Amy had been teenagers. The motivations of some of the choices here leave a lot to be desired and unpacked, with some peculiar decisions in relationship dynamics that, somehow, in the near three-hour runtime aren’t truly earned. Olsson brings a chipper presence as Lance, a fundamental ‘Peter Pan’ type who never really chooses to grow up and offers a third element to the production’s attempts at unpacking ageing, the longing for adolescence, and the regrets and melancholy of lost opportunity.

There’s an inescapable sense that Two Sisters becomes wholly symbolic, something which needed to be produced and move on from – fitting, but this doesn’t make for an effective piece of theatre. Even with a time-and-again proven team behind its production, Two Sisters bogs itself heavily into the doldrums of nostalgia, succumbing to the shortcomings of its creation. A pair of terrifically talented leading performers aren’t enough to save the script, making for a less than pleasant stay at the Holiday Heaven. 

---