The 2017 programme included two, new, one-man shows with very different takes on contemporary Welsh life; Dirty Protest returned to the Fringe with Sugar Baby: a new comedy by Alan Harris about a small-time Cardiff drug dealer, while Mr & Mrs Clark’s (F.E.A.R.) used childhood memories and public information films to examine the fragility of men’s mental health and ask how safe – or not – the world wants us to feel.
Three other plays transported audiences back to 20th Century Britain; The Other Room’s Seanmhair, written by Hywel John, is a brutal, beautiful tale of two children who meet by chance in 1950s Edinburgh. Pontardawe Arts Centre’s The Revlon Girl by Neil Docking, with its all-female cast, told the true story of the grieving mothers of Aberfan, in the months after the colliery tip collapsed in 1966 that killed 116 children. Flying Bridge Theatre’s production of Stephen MacDonald’s classic Not About Heroes looked at the friendship between WWI poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, 100 years after they met.
The remaining three productions appeared as part of the British Council Showcase 2017. These included National Dance Company Wales’ Folk and Profundis; two very distinct, short dance pieces – Folk elegiac and pastoral, Profundis full of wit and post-modern winks – that show the company’s dancers at their very best. Seagulls by Volcano Theatre - a dramatically reimagined staging of Chekhov’s The Seagull, performed in the nave of a derelict church in Leith. And Caitlin by Light, Ladd & Emberton - an intimate, violent dance piece in which Dylan Thomas’ wife, Caitlin, steps out of her husband’s shadow only to find herself inexorably drawn back in.
