Addiction and mental health are issues that seep into everyone’s life, sometimes painfully present, sometimes sadly distant. Amy Liptro has created and provided a memoir of addiction and recovery.
The Outrun is the name of the largest field on her family’s farm. Orkney is a small collection of very remote islands off the coast of Scotland. Her parents separate and her bipolar father is institutionalised. We meet her father but not her mother.
The Woman is a young dreamer from the very rural, secluded Orkney. She learns early the need to write down everything. She was lured from a comfortable, supportive community by the Siren of the unknown and unknowable. She ate the apple. She became an addict.
Orkney is soft and moist and green. London is lights and addiction. Back in Orkney, she feels more like a stranger than a returning native. She struggles to find her way back.
In this production, The Woman takes us back and forth between her new and old life in Orkney and that other life that was London. The people in her life are her anchor, good and bad.
Vicky Featherstone (director) and Stef Smith (writer / adaption) have created these two worlds of extremes in the same space. This is a new way of telling stories.
The stage is stark with just the suggestion of rolling landscape and a protective structure. The rear projections change the mood and temperature of the scenes. We are swept away with The Woman. Iris Hainsworth. She is vulnerable, the changes are fluid. Paul Brennen as Dad is her lighthouse. The cast is exciting to watch. The production is immaculately created, always on the edge of just enough.
The Outrun is beautiful and painful. We have so much to learn. We learn about ourselves and the “them” in our lives, the addicts and mentally ill. We need to keep thinking about it and talking about it so we better know what to do about it.