Leeds Playhouse – 04th October 2018.
Reviewed by Sally Richmond
5*****
Charley Miles’ debut play Blackthorn, which reminded me of a modern day Wuthering Heights in places, knits together two sagas, a capricious love story and the sad decline of the old, traditional ways of rural living.
The first two babies to be born in a Yorkshire village for 20 years are the sole characters of the play (that we see physically) and they were brilliantly portrayed by two outstanding performers – Harry Egan and Charlotte Bate. Both actors had that ‘can’t take my eyes off you’ factor and we get to know them intimately despite never finding out their names.
At the start they play as inseparable, innocent children, then fall in love as teenagers but later grow apart as she moves away to university and he stays behind to work. This theme of leaving and returning, is like the boomerang they won at a country fair, they keep coming back to their village, back to their roots and back to each other.
After the girl moves away, the two central character’s lives are almost entirely lived apart from each other and we only get to see glimpses of them when they’re reunited at a wedding, funeral and holidays. Distant remains of their deep-rooted feelings for each other chaotically puncture their efforts to fully move on; as time goes by, she starts to take an interest in the industry of the village, upset at the idea that the old cow sheds might be in line for conversion into extravagant accommodation. But does she even have a right to deliberate and get so emotional about a place she’s not lived in for years and called home? She’s not that much different from those who are buying up the whole village these days is she?
We are not given any answers. Should we simply preserve a place to keep things how they’ve always been and not move forward with regeneration or is that process of renewal really one of destruction and devastating whole communities? Is this progress? The love story we’re all willing on to survive doesn’t appear to by the end, despite a strong and unrelenting fight. People and places change and what you once thought would always be there, might eventually disappear, like the blackthorn that will inevitably be stripped back and cleared.
At points the play makes you want to scream out, “Come on just get together and stop being so stubborn!” And as mentioned earlier, like Heathcliffe and Cathy, another Yorkshire pair of star crossed lovers, they just seem to have an unbreakable bond which unlike the circumstances of the village, is unchangeable and necessary. ‘Blackthorn’ is an engaging puzzle as on the one hand it is gentle and tender but on the other a sharp and harsh recreation of the pain of chapters in one’s life time. A remarkable and searching debut, with a significant and realistic story.
Blackthorn was a finalist for the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn prize in 2017.