The Seal Wife - Attic Theatre Company
I love Scotland. I only spent a short time up there, just a couple of months, but what instantly hits you up there is how much closer the people in the community seem. Everybody knows everyone else and gossip travels fast.
It’s just this innate Scottishness that makes "The Seal Wife" have such an effect on me. Just the feel of it brings back so many memories. The two supporting characters, a pair of gossipy sisters seem strangely familiar, though I expect they would do to anyone.
"The Seal Wife" is a Scottish folk story beginning with the two sisters walking along the beach collecting coal. One swears that she can hear singing before the sound is shattered by a man shooting at them. After a brief "Should have that thing confiscated" type argument, the man, Alec, sees a woman walking out from the sea. She’s been hit by one of his wayward bullets, so he takes her home to heal. She’s reluctant to stay at first, but eventually... blah, blah..... fall in love.....etc.
The main point of the play is that way in which the woman, Rona, loves life, nature and most of all the sea. However, Alec lives by poaching the furs of seals. She tries to make him give it up, but he’s reluctant to let his employer down, "Just not this time". Thus their relationship is constantly a troubled one, where they have decide whether what they believe in or pays them is more important than each other.
I’ll try not to spoil the ending for you, like was gratefully done for me. It’s difficult to say whether I would have been able to work out what was going to happen in the end for myself without being told so. The ending is thought provoking, to say the least. And
