The whisky in those cups to celebrate bag-lady Rosie’s birthday was rapidly drowning in a downpour in Egremont Castle, and Karen Polmear’s inspired improvisation, "I’m broke and alone and terrified and wet" raised the best laugh of the afternoon from an audience too enthralled to seek shelter. Gosforth Players had brought their marvellously appropriate production of Cherry Vooght’s ‘A Seat in the Park’, two short plays that share a setting of a park bench beside a lady’s loo. The first play, ‘See If I Care’, expressed the sad theme that it is more comfortable to make believe than to face reality: two old women, each desperately pretending, one preferring to invent a lovely family than face the one she had. That got through in the dry, but gathering storm clouds opened on its companion piece and sequel ‘Night Song’, and drenched everyone to the skin.
As so often happens this spite of nature brought the very best out of the actors who expressed with passionate sincerity the theme that when you are in trouble you must go to poor people for help. It is the "broke, alone and terrified and wet" tramp Rosie who has the humanity to see a need even more acute than her own and donate her tiny inheritance from her dead companion, Maggie, to Marilyn, rejected daughter of the old woman in the first play. Anne Simpson, grime washing off her face as we watched in fascination, expressed Marilyn’s anguish with heartfelt conviction, and as a daughter rejected by her mother she was matched by Agnes, the mother rejected by her daughter, equally convincingly portrayed by Linda Kirkbride. It would not have been the same in the sunshine and it added something special to Egremont Castle’s reputation as a natural theatre. ‘King Lear’ next time?
Photos, above, Anne Simpson as Marilyn, Karen Polmear as Rosie and Linda Kirkbride as Agnes show truly professional dedication. Karen Storr’s photo, left, shows the audience intent under the darkening skies.