Lorna Irvine reviews the 'touching, tender and haunting' production, part of this year's Glasgay! festival.
This isn't girl-meets-girl; this is woman-meets-woman, but much more complicated. Sexually confused Susan (Julie Hale) has heard of controversial 'conversion' therapy that can be given to 'cure' people of homosexual or lesbian tendencies, and so decides to give it a try.
Susan is typical of a repressed background, with an overbearing ageing mother who is, in old-fashioned Scottish slang, the very picture of a 'nippy sweetie'. Yet, despite her homophobia and seemingly reactionary attitude, the old lady seems to have the taste of a gay middle-aged man: Graham Norton, the divas from The Golden Girls and Some Like It Hot. The mother/daughter scenes are cringingly realistic.When forthright, spiky Grace (Mary Gapinski) chats Susan up, however, she realises it may finally be time, on the eve of her fortieth birthday, to actually become an adult and come out.
Stef Smith's language is heartbreakingly lucid and yet hilarious—she has a clear, unsparing eye and a deft touch for intimacy, and little snapshots of pleasure and frustration. The scenes, gorgeously lit by Malcolm Rogan, flit from first kisses to last bitter encounters, and the canned laughter of sitcoms and laughter used in the therapy techniques are juxtaposed in their absurdity.
Meanwhile, the zealous, almost evangelical smile of Lisa (the 'ex-gay') at the 'clinic' contrasts with the more level-headed Grace. Gapinski flits between these two characters with ease, and the staging is nicely structured—once you get used to the device of past and present co-existing.
Both
women are wonderful, with natural chemistry, and this is easily Smith's most
complete work yet- touching, tender and haunting yet never polemical or
heavy-handed, popping gay clichés like balloons.
Cured is at The Arches until October 26.
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