Music on a Distant Shore - Ryde Depozitory

From the moment you enter the theatre you are transported to the Scottish Highlands by the superb fiddle playing, echoing one of the play's themes.

The Depozitory provides a cosy and very civilised environment, and I was soon settled with a glass of red to enjoy the show.

And enjoy it I did.

The early scenes were a little slow for me, I have to admit, but they set the scene – we met Elaine, a struggling widow juggling a job she hates and her domestic and maternal responsibilities while yearning for love – and a different job (and boss!)

Once the internet romance starts to blossom, juxtaposed with the grind of the telesales job she clearly isn’t suited to, as her frustrated boss seems to delight in pointing out, the pace picks up and the audience is carried along by the excellent performances.

There are some moments of high comedy, even if one or two of the plot devices are a little predictable, and the four actors make the most of the humour with careful timing and delivery, while the underlying pathos of the characters’ situations come through more and more as the play progresses and elements of the past unfold alongside the current action.

While we immediately see and sympathise with the difficulties faced by Elaine and her son Kevin, who is desperate for some form of connection with his dead father, we could be forgiven if at first sight we think Alma, the ‘happy medium’, and Arthur, Elaine’s boss, have their life organised as they want it.

Without giving away the plot, as the play moves towards its denouement, we discover that those we thought were in control of their own lives are just as unfulfilled as anyone else. And through four extremely sensitive and accomplished performances we are led to an unexpected but fitting conclusion.

Gradually, along with the characters, we learn that although we may think we know what we want in life, sometimes life itself has other ideas.

Music on a Distant Shore is on this evening at Chale Church – if you don’t catch it there, it’s worth crossing to the North Island to see it in Portsmouth on 26 June.

The Truth Untold

This brand new play by Kevin Wilson, takes its title from a Wilfred Owen poem, Strange Meeting, which explores the meeting of two enemy World War I soldiers in the Underworld.

Appropriate for this centenary year, but the play takes the theme rather than subject matter of the poem: the action is set firmly in the present day: two protagonists, former school friends who are now a Conservative MP and a Social Services manager respectively.

Just like the soldiers however, these men have so much - including their past - in common, but find themselves on different sides of the political debate because of their chosen career path. Both are pressurised by the expectations of others and the truth gets lost amid the posturing and empty justifications.

The catalyst for their meeting after many years apart is the death of a small boy in care, and the subplot exploring the way the media cynically exploits the situation with no thought for anything other than selling copy is effectively written,, particularly a scene in which the boy's grieving mother cannot voice her feelings and allows the reported to construct the copy he wants and portray her as feckless and at the same time critical of the system which has allowed her son to die.

The profoundness of the impact of the meeting on both protagonists could have jarred without the cleverly interspersed flashback scenes which enabled us to appreciate the depth of, and reasons for the attachment between these two as boys. With this insight, the audience appreciates the way the confrontation with a former ally and friend turned opponent leads each to question, and then reject, the values of the life he has been leading.

The play itself was beautifully written, with some telling speeches at exactly the right moment; the staging was simple - the odd scene change could have been slightly sharper but that's a minor criticism and it didn't impact on the flow of the story. The portrayals of the protagonists were sharply drawn and the emotional torture as the play unfolded was brought out well. The supporting cast, playing various roles, were effective, especially the MP's ambitious wife, and the dialogue between her and her husband was at once humorous and insightful.

Not only is the nature of the truth - told and untold - questioned, but our habit of wanting to pigeon-hole people, and the media exploitation of this, is laid bare. I was led into the trap of wanting to label characters - feckless? Grieving? Sentimental? Uncaring? Gay? Straight? Conservative? Labour? But in the end, the only label worth putting on anyone is human. And being true to yourself is the most valuable form of truth.

I very much hope The Truth Untold will be staged again - it deserves a wider audience than it has yet had.