The Pleasance Baby Grand is a small venue, built from Portacabin Lego, hot and clammy on the day this production was seen. Audience members were probably grateful for the tea dispensed by Paul McCleary near the show's commencement. A gesture of hospitality to humanise the people at the heart of his tale, demonised over centuries and still the butt of red-top prejudice and political scare-mongering.
The origins of the Roma people remain uncertain; their own belief that they came from India competing with the perhaps more credible suggestion they were part of a diaspora which began with the collapse of the Byzantine Empire and produced Romanians, Vlachs and Roma amongst other peoples.
Whatever the case, the persecution of the landless Gypsies continues into the present. Proportionally one of the groups to suffer most from Nazi persecution and extermination, Gypsy children provided the Nazi's maddest "scientist" Josef Mengle with many victims of his dreadful "experiments" in eugenics. Today, politicians in Poland, Italy and elsewhere, including the United Kingdom, use Gypsies as bogey-people to disguise their attacks on the freedom and autonomy of their constituents.
Being Gypsy has never been easy, although the community itself has never significantly threatened the settled. It has been asserted that a square mile of land would be sufficient to accommodate all the gypsies and travelling people of England. True or not, it indicates the small size of the problem and perhaps the relative simplicity of a solution.
History and politics aside, which scarcely happens in this tight and passionate production, McCleary delivers a strong performance which consistently finds all the right tones of light and shade.
Lynch's script gives McCleary enough space to unfold a character who has literally seen it all and fears the return of the worst. Dave Greenfield's cunningly devised soundscape delivers effective counter-point comment from radio phone-in bigots, nervous officials and Gypsies themselves.
This is a remarkable achievement by an obviously very talented group of people. In this case, These Colours certainly are fine.
Times: August 7-31 (not 18th or 25th), 3.15pm
Copyright Bill Dunlop 2009
First published on EdinburghGuide.com 2009