Do you ever wonder whether a person could lead two utterly different lives without either self being aware of the other?’ (Edwin Morgan) Read more …
Edwin Morgan’s last room in a nursing home in the West End of Glasgow. Everything’s reduced to the barest essentials of just a bed, a wheelchair and a desk.
On a dark ordinary Friday afternoon in winter, middle-aged James, the poet’s biographer, his friend and helper, there to do routine admin with the frail eighty-seven-year old, hears this urgent question from a deeply disturbed Morgan. Who then recounts a series of vivid dreams -- nightmares -- which have been afflicting him.
Images, poems, remembered lovers, regrets, rough trade, propositions accepted or propositions avoided, truths, desires, lives, surround this bed, a Secret Gay History of Glasgow. And James, the listener, is disturbed too, stuck there like a reluctant interpreter/psychiatrist/amateur Freudian, trapped in his task...
Lochhead’s play is as rich as it is memorable; and even in its most awkward moments, the three actors – including Lewis Howden as the genial biographer, and J . Steven Duffy as a series of lovers – deliver it with a passion and care that speaks volumes, not least about the love that surrounds the immortal memory of Edwin Morgan, just a year after his death.
Without trying to hide any part of Morgan, Lochhead is respectful, picturing Morgan as a man unwilling to compromise, even with cancer, but equally gentle and private.
Interview: Liz Lochhead
Tron Theatre, Glasgow from Wednesday November 2, 2011, until Saturday November 5, 2011. More info: www.tron.co.uk
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