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The glorious Rivendell Theatre production
of WRENS in Chicago. Photo by Shari Joffe.
My friend Dwight saw this striking illustration and thought it reminded him of me. I had to agree. Except for the rouge. It's called "Gemelia" by Kate Pugsley.
This was the first time one of my plays was produced in my home city of Edinburgh, Scotland. My niece, Anne, and attended. And the publicist for the WRNS magazine came to do a piece on the play and author.
The show ran August 5-16, 18- 28 and was produced by Tiny Teapot Theatre out of Leeds University. They have a Facebook page. You can also visit the huge Fringe Festival website by clicking FRINGE.
My play WRENS was produced as part of the Fringe Festival in August 2011 in Edinburgh.
Edinburgh Festival Fringe preview – The W.R.E.N.S Need You
At Venue 18, Sweet Grassmarket, City 1, August 4/28th, the engagingly alliterative Tiny Teapot Theatre ensemble premier Edinburgh born playwright, Anne McGravie’s, compelling drama ‘Wrens’ (Women’s Royal Navy Service). The production, drawing on McGravie’s personal experiences, both explores and celebrates the camaraderie, emotions and binding loyalties of young women caught up in the maelstrom of World War 2.
It promises to be an embracing, certainly emotional, journey of reminiscence, where moments of nostalgia, astutely viewed through cracked, rose-tinted spectacles, bear insight into the life-changing experiences of those young women, many as young as seventeen on signing-up. For most of them it was first time away from home: a liberating experience, and not least in the belief that they too, like absent fathers and brothers could now do ‘Their bit’.
Chatting to The Edinburgh Reporter, May Thomson (nee Kennedy) who is East Calder born and who spent her childhood in Glasgow, recalls with fondness and uniform pressed sharp detail her service in the Wrens when she was stationed at Portland Bill, Dorset, on ASDICS and ship to shore signals. A particular memory was the conspiratorial willingness to thwart the Customs & Excise sentry guards whose hatred was legion amongst both Wrens and ratings on shore-leave alike.
“Not being subject to the Naval Discipline Act, we ‘Jennys’ were free from the constant searches the ratings were subject to on leaving shore-base. We were complicit ‘smugglers’ of their duty-free cigarettes. Even more elicit, and therefore equally more fun, was to conceal bottles of ‘sippers’, the collected rum rations tots saved during tours of duty that we would then hand over to the relieved ratings at the nearest pub. All, of course, in line with our patriotic duty to boost moral.”
The initiation into otherwise rigid Navy discipline, the revelatory candour of barrack-room humour and the friendships that bound them, inform this incisive, emotive but never sentimental journey. Drawing on the musical sound-track that defined the wartime experience within a music hall atmosphere the play captures the essence of what a true Fringe show is all about. And what better location than the Grassmarket, steeped in Edinburgh history and mystery snuggled beneath the imposing Castle ramparts. It is planned for Annie McGrivie (now living in Chicago, but here for the premiere) to meet with fellow ex-Wrens after the show and share memories.
THE EDINBURGH REPORTER
August 10, 2011
W.R.E.N.S.
Venue 18. Sweet Grassmarket: City 1 Apex City Hotel.
Without a doubt one of the hot-ticket certainties for this year’s Fringe has to be the quaintly named Tiny Teapot Theatre’s production of Edinburgh born, ex-Wren, Anne V. McGravie’s W.R.E.N.S. Set in their Orkney WW2 Nissan hut for the ‘Duration’ seven, young and older, girls have to contemplate the ambiguous implications of the worst-kept secret:-that Peace is about to be declared.
A war over, but personal conflicts are only about to commence. How will their fortunes and status in ‘Civvy Street’ unfold? The irony being that for many of them Service life has been a liberating experience. Squabbles, spats and catty asides constantly resonate as a release from the fractious minutiae of their claustrophobic dormitory existence. Meanwhile, the withdrawn Dawn, often the target of their snipes, is happier to escape in to her pulp-fiction romantic novels. But she has a bitter secret that we gradually begin to appreciate, and the consequences of which impact on all of them as events unfold in parallel with the announcement of ‘Hostilities Ended.’
The characters are sharply formed and insightfully cast with sincerity and convincing empathy. Each has her own dynamic, though we are often drawn into responding to events through the eyes of recent recruit, seventeen years old (she insists it’s seventeen & a half!) Megan, whose sprightly innocence sometime grates on the older girls. But, she too, has her childhood ghosts and realises that, just as her clumsily grasps at forming friendships might bear fruition, her naivety leaves her floundering at the realisation of Dawn and Chelsea’s predicament.
The set-piece songs eschew any kitsch, nostalgia romanticism with the setting to music of one of the cast’s ex-Wren grandmother’s poem, ‘The Great Illusion’ a heart-stopping multi-harmony treasure. There’s a sombre, reflective but life-affirming essence to this production that is bed-rocked in sympathetic, but never sentimental scripting, realised through convincing characterisation. A show that could stand your attention. Strongly Recommended. (Age 14+ as a guidance.)
A review of WRENS from Edinburgh
