Writer: Ena Lamont Stewart
Director: Finlay Glen
Class divides, snap judgements and plenty of loneliness; the Finborough Theatre‘s rediscovered playwright Ena Lamont Stewart captures the limited aspiration and emotionally troubled existence of people feeling excluded from the world. Not performed for 35 years in the UK, Knocking on the Wall is a trilogy of social realist plays that examine slices of life in Glasgow in the 1970s in three quite different spaces where a personal crisis runs up against the assumptions that characters make about each other.
The opening pair of One Act dramas – Towards Evening and Walkies Time for a Black Poodle – are almost companion pieces, two duologues that focus on female experience in which the characters’ backgrounds and childhood opportunities shape the adults they have become. Towards Evening captures a late-night conversation between a brother (Robert Hands) and sister (Janette Foggo) in middle age, reunited after many years and discovering disparities in their education and understanding of the world that have affected their personalities, later experiences and their ability to tolerate one another. In the subsequent play, a woman (Joanne Gallagher) and her housekeeper (Foggo) exchange barbs, explain their respective educational histories and explore possible common ground, notable for having interesting economic reversal with the woman of ‘higher’ class in the paid position.
This Finborough revival directed by Finlay Glen creates space for each narrative to grow organically, and while problems in Lamont Stewart’s writing are exposed including a tendency to switch moods too rapidly and insufficient grounding of the characters to make their behaviours wholly credible, the conversations become increasingly compelling, if a little static, once they actually get going. None of the characters are entirely sympathetic and audience interest in their plights does come and go, but Glen’s production builds tension well within each play, while still finding parallels across the three works presented, emphasising the socio-economic differences that produce both solidarity and conflict often within the same conversation.
The final piece is the most overtly comic, at least in this reading – anchored by a similar long duologue between the unlikely pairing of a fragile middle-class woman (Jasmine Hyde) and a plumber’s mate thrown together while they wait for others to arrive. Here, sensitive anxiety and social decorum meet a blunt, pragmatism, creating opportunities for humour that Glen’s cast embraces. Lamont Stewart’s depiction of her working-class man is heavily cliched – he smokes, speaks in slang and listens to loud pop music with little appreciation of the social niceties, but in Matt Littleson’s performance Alec is arguably the most relatable character of the night, struggling to manage the eccentricities and overly dramatic nature of his client.
Glen has taken a repertory approach that works across the three plays, giving each of the four actors a leading role. The nature of Lamont Stewart’s writing means performances are heightened and often accelerated to meet the rapidly shifting reactions of her characters so Knocking on the Wall doesn’t entirely make the case for a wider Lamont Stewart revival but there is certainly reason to reinvestigate and stage more work by female post-war playwrights.
Runs until 25 November 2023
