Twelve years ago, from the mouth of a great sacrifice, a child was born.
And they called her Autumn. Read more …
Isaac returns to his family home with a chance to atone for the terrible mistake that sent him to prison.
Autumn is a little girl whose time is running out. With three sleeps left before her birthday, she can only wish for a miracle, or an unexpected act of selflessness.
Her grandmother, Sophia, brings them together in a desperate attempt to save her family, at any cost. Set against the eerie backdrop of an isolated rural community and steeped in the folklore of the harvest, Grain in the Blood is a noirish thriller exploring a timely moral dilemma: how much are we prepared to sacrifice for the greater good?
Not only is Grain in the Blood intelligent, philosophically intricate, and genuinely moving, it’s also quite funny. It is a stunning production that certainly provides audiences with plenty of ideas to ponder.
The detached acting in Rob Drummond’s horror-flecked melodrama render it less than the sum of its parts.
Rob Drummond harvests unnerving humour as well as tension from a rural family torn by grief, guilt and sacrifice.
Grain In The Blood doesn’t so much contain and transcend genres, as move indecisively between them for a gripping, yet unsatisfying, 90 minutes.
It’s an interesting proposal from Drummond, but underpowered characters and uninspiring staging means Grain in the Blood never quite reaches its potential as a psychological chiller.
Unfortunately, this co-production between the Tron and the Traverse rather loses its nerve once this dysfunctional family’s dilemma reaches a critical point.
Despite these flaws, this production was haunting, and the well-crafted script was gracefully brought to life on stage by a fully capable cast, who gave a performance that was thrilling and chilling in equal measure.
Making a bargain with the devil is one thing but it’s the bargains we make with ourselves to justify our own set of morals that this play exposes under the light of a harvest moon.
So it had me on side all the way through, and it's worth catching for the performances, but I was left wishing there'd been a bit more depth to the ideas.
There is some memorable writing here, particularly in the tremendously witty closing line, but it is not, sadly, enough to save the drama from its own shortcomings.
Strong performances from an excellently choreographed ensemble ensure that this is genuinely a production worth seeing.
Although the troubling atmosphere dissipates long before the end, the efforts of so many at least retain interest. The suspicion remains, however, that this could have been much better.
Taggart stars John Michie and Blythe Duff reunite for new stage production--and don't rule out crime-fighting return.
Elliot Roberts--Grain in the Blood
Tron Theatre, Glasgow from Wednesday October 19, 2016, until Saturday October 29, 2016. More info: www.tron.co.uk
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh from Tuesday November 1, 2016, until Saturday November 12, 2016. More info: www.traverse.co.uk
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