Writer and Director: Cerys Jones
There is no direct English translation for the Welsh word “Cynefin”. At a basic level it may mean “habitat”. However, it’s more about the relationship between people and the habitat in which they live: one is shaped and formed by the other, ensuring that the bond between person and place is intrinsic and unbreakable. Home is where the heart is.
In Cerys Jones’s new play, Cariad Owens (Lucy Havard) is keen to break that bond. She has left the small Welsh town where she and her ancestors have always lived, and moved to a basement flat in Balham, ready to start a life without connections to her family.
She is unaware that she has brought with her some ancestral ghosts in the form of her grandparents and great-grandparents, headed by matriarch Eva (Marina Johnson). Eva is particularly keen that Cariad returns to the ancestral home with a stubbornness that her great-granddaughter has inherited.
As Cariad begins to enjoy the utter differentness of London life – from enjoying the Tube as she explores London’s museums and art galleries to complaining about the same once she gets a job and has to tackle the Northern Line in rush hour – it seems at first as if she is forming a connection with the capital to replace that which her ancestors had with their homeland.
But while Cariad may feel she can shake off her connection to the land, her links to her ancestors are harder to discard. Each of the four spirits watching over her discusses their own life, having the opportunity to monologue about some defining moment that crystallises the aspect of their own personality that is also present in Cariad.
There are moments in this structure where Jones’s dialogue starts heading towards the polemic, but the performers generally can keep such moments light enough not to grate. Far more effective are the moments of levity, particularly from Ruth Parratt’s Mogwen, who, as a barmaid at the town’s working men’s club, embodies Cariad’s party spirit.
When Cariad has a homesickness wobble as part of a raucously drunken weekend, the central tenet of Jones’s piece comes into its sharpest focus. As the paternal figures (Will Tusker as Eva’s husband Jack, and their son Cai, played by Jack Ayres) seek to find ways Cariad can be happy in her chosen new home, Eva is adamant that it is her distance from her homeland that is at fault. “Bad things happen when they’re not where they’re from,” she insists.
This final sequence sees Havard give a beautifully heart-wrenching performance. For much of the play, Cariad does not interact with her ancestors, but gradually her own monologue dovetails into the ghosts’ conversations as if she is conversing with them.
Jones’s work suggests that it is not a rejection of the land that is causing Cariad distress, but her refusal to accept that she brings her family with her. Maybe the best English meaning of Cynefin is not so much that home is where the heart is, but that the heart is where home is.
It’s a powerful sentiment to end on, and the conclusion to an entertaining and emotional piece.
Continues until 14 January 2023
