Flying with Swans

Flying with Swans

Oran Mor, Glasgow

Mary Brennan

The clocks have gone back, the year is on the turn and overhead, the skies are beginning to fill with migrating swans. On land, or rather on a ferry bound for Arran, are three game old birds: they're re-uniting in memory of their childhood pastime - chasing departing swans, in hopes of holding onto tail feathers and flying off to exotic climes.

The briskly efficient Dolly (Anne Kidd) has made that dream a reality: her next trip is to the Galapagos. Jean (Kay Gallie), however, has fey moments when she's not sure of where she is. When she does remember, it's with a haunted awareness of how joyless life now is, under her daughter's anxious eye. Mona (Karen Ramsay) is still the wild child, but that's maybe because she doesn't take the pills they give her in the care home.

Jack Dickson's script provides a rollicking good opportunity for these three richly experienced hands to roll out the kind of comic timing that can turn a pause into a punchline, a throwaway aside into a killer barb and a running gag into a whole relay team of jokes. There's more to all this, of course, than just a "carry on doon the watter", or a female version of Still Game.

Director Alison Peebles ensures the laughter doesn't exclude the bitter-sweet ache that comes with growing old and feeling at a loss - dreams and lovers, health and happiness, all beginning to disappear over the horizon, like the swans.

So, yes, there is a dying fall laced through the hilarity, but there's such glee and mischief - and such wickedly good performances - that the nip in the play seems to hit home more intensely in the cold autumnal air outside.

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