THEATRE
The Head in the Jar
Oran Mor, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
THREE STARS
On she comes, glass in hand. Caitlin is twenty years a widow when we see her in 1973, but still in thrall to her dead poet, Dylan Thomas, and the bottle that was the third (shared) love in their marriage from the start. She sits the glass on a pedestal and, against a backdrop of bottle-filled gantries, this turmoil of a woman sets out to face her twin demons, perhaps even move on from them.
Deb Jones's new play, which won the David MacLennan Award 2014, homes in on Caitlin and Dylan at the beginning, the middle and the end of their chequered relationship. Mutual passion has ebbed even if mutual neediness hasn't; his trips away, their tit-for-tat infidelities and her rancour at being left holding the babies (three of them) have taken both a physical and a mental toll. They no longer seem to drink together, but they both do drink.
Caitlin (Gaylie Runciman) reckons they have become pickled, with all the juice shrivelled out of them. Jones's use of this image as a leitmotif is unstintingly re-iterated by Runciman in rants against Dylan or sorrowful, self-pitying maunderings. If poverty, abortions and her isolation from London's once-familiar arty crowd have exacerbated her drinking, alcohol has loosened her tongue: words pour out of her in hectic torrents. Thomas (Stephen Clyde, channeling roistering Welsh boyo charm ) hasn't got a leg to stand on. Once besotted, now he's the sot who runs away and then dies on her. Director Alan McKendrick and the cast work hard to make Jones's script more than a welter of words - it's a moot point as to whether the glass is half-full or half-empty here.
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