DramaNorth East & YorkshireReview

These Majestic Creatures – Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough

Reviewer: Ron Simpson

Writer: Emma Geraghty

Director: Kash Arshad

A whale has been beached in Scarborough. Max comes home early for her grandmother’s funeral, ostensibly to see it. The play begins with her in the fond embrace of her mother and ends with the two of them affectionately together on the shore watching attempts to clear away the whale, but in between fondness and affection have been in short supply.

Emma Geraghty has taken an ambitious approach to presenting the ebb and flow of three generations in the same family. Events happen over a 40-year period in the kitchen of a B&B in Scarborough, involving Max, her mother Pam and grandmother Edith. Chloe Wyn’s set in the McCarthy, SJT’s end on auditorium, makes the B&B seem to be growing out of the rocks of Scarborough and a picture window looks down on the sea – and, apparently, the whale.

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The events of 2023 are presented in short scenes alongside events from 1983 onwards, picking out key moments in the three relationships. A change in the calendar (it’s always October) and a snatch of music from the year and the transformation is complete so that a potentially terminal row between Pam and Max from 2023 is followed by a very similar one between Edith and Pam from 1989 – only the 1989 music is better! Ingrid Bolton-Gabrielsen is Max, but also Pam’s younger self, while Andrina Carroll plays Pam and works her way through energetic late middle age to furious old age as Edith.

The causes of friction are different, but related. In the first scene Max is frustrated by her mother’s refusal to allow the word “queer” into the house with reference to her daughter while her mother resents Max’s habit of returning home for a few days with no warning and then not being seen for months. The question of home figures large throughout, different characters’ perception of what “home” means to them. At the end of the play Pam unexpectedly states that she has always been angry – maybe the same could be said for her mother.

Emma Geraghty has a nice feel for the intimacy of people who know each other as family, even if half the time they don’t like each other very much, and from this comes the wry understated humour of much of the piece, even if the eruptions into fury can seem a bit sudden and a bit extreme. Ingrid Bolton-Gabrielsen, ideal as the long-striding queer daughter whose troubled relationship is a constant undercurrent, makes less of the younger Pam. Andrina Carroll, on the other hand, is tremendous as Edith, her violence of emotions palpable even when standing still, in a memorable double with the aggrieved Pam.

Runs until 4th November 2023

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The Yorkshire & North East team is under the editorship of Jacob Bush. The Reviews Hub was set up in 2007. Our mission is to provide the most in-depth, nationwide arts coverage online.

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