High on a shelf, surrounded by the natural products Lush is famous for, a laptop streams images of busy bees – images synonymous with hard work and unswerving devotion to the making of honey and the service of the queen bee.
Actually, the same scenario could apply to the three women in Stef Smith's new play, premiered as part of the Arches Behaviour festival and staged in the intimate context of this Lush outlet.
Grandmother Ginnie (Joanna Tope) took to small-scale commercial bee-keeping in 1945 when she was just 18. Her daughter Joan (Lesley Hart) built the handful of hives into a thriving business, introducing hybrid bees and pesticides to her gameplan of increased productivity and profitability. Now her daughter Katie (Kirsty Stuart) is having to deal with the unanticipated environmental fallout: since 2008, bees have been dying off in their millions – but can she just walk away from the hives that have, for decades, governed the lives of her relatives?
Bit by bit, Smith's series of intertwining monologues reveals the personal cost this family loyalty to the bees has exacted on each woman, not that any of the heartache, loneliness or sacrificed relationships are ever shared across the generations.
If there is a message in Smith's honeycomb of themes, it is that silence is a killer – and that we all need to speak out, not just to protect the bees but to maintain the ties that bind families together. It's not a hectically histrionic script, but an outstanding cast infuse it with a telling sincerity that reproaches passivity and complacency.
HHH
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