A death impacts everyone differently. The grief felt by a spouse is not the same as that felt by a child, grandchild or parent. None of these griefs are right or wrong, but each one is essentially unknowable to those not experiencing it.
This is the essential truth at the heart of Cathy, the story of the fractures that emerge in a family after the death of beloved Grandad Tommy. He leaves behind a granddaughter (Chloe Hodgson) who will miss shared trips to am dram. He leaves behind a daughter (Michele Gallagher) who has lost the parent she felt closest to, and who can’t truly comprehend anyone else’s sadness.
And he leaves behind his wife, Cathy (Elaine C. Smith). It is plain that he was the centre of her world, his idiosyncrasies and irritating habits things she cannot imagine being without. Cathy is not an easy woman to get on with at the best of times, but Tommy’s death has broken her. Survivor’s guilt has made her cruel and sour in her unbearable grief, unable to comprehend a world – as she sees it – alone.
Tommy’s death also triggers a crisis of faith in Cathy, who is furious with the God who has let her down. A flickering light embodies her fracturing state of mind and wavering beliefs. Somewhat prolonged set changes are taken advantage of to capture the sense of life carrying on when for Cathy everything has stopped.
Writer and director Eilidh Loan understands that even after a death, life carries on. Cathy’s granddaughter is still going to have her baby, her daughter is still going to go to work at Morrison’s, there will still be humour. Admittedly, Cathy’s humour becomes a weapon to wield at her own family, but the play is peppered with laughs throughout, and the audience is dragged from weepy silence to gales of merriment.
Elaine C. Smith is magnificent as Cathy. She holds herself with a tangible brittleness, hollow and flinching. She smokes automatically, her entire being on autopilot. As Cathy begins to understand how she might live with the grief – not get over it – Smith’s body unbends, relaxes. She shifts easily from furious snarl to whipcrack humour to unseeing numbness.
The rest of the cast do a good job, but they are a little overshadowed by Smith. Michele Gallagher as Cathy’s daughter Flo is the strongest, constantly at breaking point as she tries to grieve for her father while finding her mother’s reaction perplexing and infuriating. Alan Orr (Flo’s husband Colin) provides well-timed comic relief, and gets to show off his range as he plays various incidental characters.
It is Sally Reid’s Lizzie who finally gets through to Cathy though. Lizzie is an initially irritating, manic presence, but Cathy realises her hyperactivity is an act, a bit of lying that helps her cope with tragedy and get through the day. Reid pitches Lizzie perfectly, just the right side of annoying so that sympathy comes flooding in once the revelation about her past is made.
Cathy may at times be a touch schmaltzy, and its messages are not groundbreaking but it is so well made and powerfully delivered that it absolutely earns its satisfying conclusion. Grief – true grief – never leaves you. You don’t get over it or tidy it away. But you can learn to live with it, to accommodate it, to move on and make a new life around it.
Performed at the Traverse Theatre on 18 August as part of the Edinburgh Fringe
Until 30 August, see website for dates and times
Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes, no interval
Written and Directed by Eilidh Loan
Co-directed by Hamish McColl
Set & Costume Designer: Kenny Miller
Lighting Designer Grant Anderson
Composer & Sound Designer Gary Cameron
Cast: Michele Gallagher, Chloe Hodgson, Alan Orr, Sally Reid, Elaine C. Smith