Bittersweet rural coming-of-age stories feel like a fairly common occurrence on the Paines Plough Roundabout. But if when they’re as smartly crafted as this, then the more the merrier.
‘Blackthorn’, the debut play from Paines Plough writer-in-residence Charley Miles, is a compact but complex thing, which tackles the complexity of lifelong friendships, gentrification and the fundamental question of what is home.
Her (Charlotte Bate, brittle, slightly haunted) and Him (Harry Egan, always disconceringly close to anger) were the first two people to be born in their north Yorkshire village for 20 years. In a series of short scenes, we watch them grow up together, become a tentative couple, then drift apart as she heads off to university and he stays at home working as a farmer.
And so Jacqui Honess-Martin’s well-acted, sensitively-directed production continues: though their lives are almost entirely lived apart from each other, we only get to see the fleeting, often awkward moments when they’re reunited. Jagged shards of their old feelings for each other messily prick their attempts to fully move on; as time goes by, she starts to take an increasing interest in the business of the village, distraught at the idea that the old cow sheds might be in line for conversion into luxury accommodation. But does she even have a right to consider a place she’s not lived in for years home? How different is she from the wealthy out-of-towners who’ve bought up plots in the idyllic churchyard? (‘There’s nowhere left for us to die’, he muses).
Miles doesn’t offer any easy answers – presumably because there often aren‘t any. Preservation and gentrification aren’t a right/wrong dichotomy – they’re complications of being temporal beings in a changing world. ‘Blackthorn’ is a tender and sharp evocation of the ache of time – hopefully we’ll hear from Miles again soon.
