Sarah Power follows up Grud with her new play, Welcome to Pemfort, currently on the main stage at Soho Theatre. Like the earlier play, this is a 90 minute drama touching on addiction and abuse themes.
Don’t be thinking this is all doom and gloom, though. Pemfort Castle (“a small, slightly rubbish castle”, according to the playtext) is having a ‘Living History’ event.
Glenn (an earnest Ali Hadji-Heshmati) and Ria (an enthusiastic Lydia Larson) work in the castle gift shop with manager Uma (a wonderfully warm Debra Gillett).
Their efforts to create a timeline from the thinnest of historical events at the castle are amusing, and the shop (beautifully arranged in Alys Whitehead’s set) is a place of misplaced enthusiasm (“we sell chai!”) where no one bothers to visit.
When Kurtis (a nuanced performance from Sean Delaney) comes to join the team, the small town mentality seems quick to judge him, especially when prison rears its head. He bonds with Ria over a love of nature, but is that enough to fill in the cracks of a traumatic reveal?
Without revealing too much, Welcome to Pemfort is a complex play that asks us to consider what we would do, confronted with the realities of a criminal past? Each character has space to reveal something of how they think.
Power herself makes no clear judgement, and Welcome to Pemfort builds up to a suggestion of several endings – I’m not convinced the one we see is perhaps the most satisfying or realistic.
I was also wrong-footed into believing Ria was younger than the ‘early 30s’ noted in the playtext. She reads much younger, perhaps deliberately so? Kurtis is the core of this drama, from his nervous first scene to his happiness at finding a place to settle, through to his final arc.
Both Larson and Delaney convince in the more difficult scenes, while some of Ed Madden‘s decisions as director offer a lightness of touch that is appreciated – an audience can suffer the heavy blows better if they are not relentless.
The castle’s history as explored by Glenn is sparse – a ‘Bishop’s Battle’, a raunchy scandal, a dubious suicide – but build a patchwork of what Pemfort is and was.
This play could have taken a more focused look at how these four characters came together, with Uma’s history being of particular interest, but it is a strong and pervasive play as it stands. It might have benefitted from a cut or two, but I liked it.
I’m giving it 4 stars.
Welcome to Pemfort continues at Soho Theatre until 18 Apr with tickets here.
Photo credit: Camilla Greenwell