The Girl With Red Hair
Hampstead

Luxuriating in the warmth of a mellow summer sun, the inhabitants of a Scottish seaside town are living in the shadow of death.
At the heart of their little idyll are the graves of those whose passing continues to shape the lives of the living.
Sharman Macdonald’s new play takes this premise as the basis for a complex and satisfying romance. In it diverse groups of townspeople move, through the course of a single afternoon, to epiphanal moments of awakening, after which the hands of the dead might loosen their grip on the town.
Cath, the manageress of the inn, has drawn into herself following the death of her teenage daughter, Roslyn, in a car crash a year before. A new customer, the charming and Blarney-literate Stuart, slowly encourages her to unfold and to rediscover the sensual appreciation of life she lost when Roslyn died.
Thirteen-year-old Izzy adored the dead girl too, and endlessly plays-out imagined episodes from her life with her more worldly friend Pam. Pam’s growing reluctance to take part means that Izzy must confront the reality of her loss.
Two elderly ladies, Sadie and Ina, contemplate both the loss of others and the question of whether the sun would still set and the tide continue to turn without them in their regular seat on the promenade. Even so, for Sadie, at least, the death of another means the prospect of a new beginning.
For Roslyn’s former boyfriend, Matt, and his new lover Corinne, the shadow cast by the dead girl threatens to blot out their relationship altogether.
The writer’s skill is in bringing coherence to these disparate narrative strands, producing a work that is greater than the sum of the short vignettes from which it is constructed.
An ensemble piece in which all eight speaking roles are given equal weight, the Hampstead’s production succeeds by virtue of a strong cast in which Sandra Voe, Sheila Reid and Patricia Kerrigan, respectively as the two rye old girls and the reawakening Cath, shine most brightly.
Mike Bradwell’s direction is unshowy, wisely allowing space for Macdonald’s spare but gently poetic dialogue. Robin Don’s conventional but handsome set, lit in real-time by the descending twilight, helps set the elegiac mood and makes physical the play’s ultimate moment of release.

020 7722 9301
Until April 16