“Groping for the luminous past of my infancy, I never fail to find it gleaming here and there. But never in chronological order. My childhood in Edinburgh so far as my memory stretches back to my school days occurs in bright flashes, illuminating every detail of the scene." (Curriculum Vitae)
Thus begins the autobiography of Muriel Spark, whose treasured memories of James Gillespie’s school in Edinburgh inspired her exquisite novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
In similar vein, two actresses, Samara Maclaren and Nalini Chetty, have devised a fresh and intelligent multi-media play about their life and times at an Edinburgh private school. Blending real incidents, fact and fiction, the narrative explores their close friendship from giggling girls to 29-year-old young women.
Puellae: Latin noun, plural - girl, lass, young woman and, poetically, sweetheart.
The stage setting is here and now during the Fringe, in a Bistro where Tess (Nalini), who just off the train from London, is meeting Niamh (Samara) after a year apart. Over a bottle of Pinot Grigio, they exchange news, marriage plans and gossip about former classmates, success and failure in love and work.
Interspersing their fizzing dialogue, short film sequences illustrate key moments – such as Tess dragging her tiger-print suitcase up the steep steps of Fleshmarket Close. This visual sense of place snaps the time frame, the journey home, her smile at the familiarity of the Old Town streets and old friends reunited.
And so the teenage reminiscences begin: their wild behaviour, eating chips, first cigarettes, romantic crushes, puberty – “I remember how uncomfortable I was in my own skin”. Observations, memories, girlish chat is all so honest and evocative (especially if like me you were at a girls’ private school!).
Now dressed in white shirts and ties, on screen and on stage, Tess and Niamh time travel back fifteen years to become the cheeky girls they once were.
But what happened to their youthful beliefs, dreams, plans? Aged 14, they promised “nothing will come between us”, but have they been entirely truthful with each other? They are now at the crossroads – approaching 30 years old. How will life pan out in the next ten years?
This structure of the play is ingenious, interweaving past and present: live action on stage crisscrosses seamlessly with film footage on screen.
Award-winning documentary film maker Ruaridh Arrow has created a dynamic and atmospheric film, grainy, home-video style, where the innocent schoolgirls laugh and run in the rain, amidst the greystone and dark shadows of the Royal Mile. Life is such a game they believe, but we have glimpsed their future.
For lovers of “Sex and the City” this is a feisty Scottish scenario on the theme, with smart, sassy performances by Samara and Nalini - perhaps so believable as they are partly playing themselves.
This is a genuine, joyous portrait of an enduring friendship fused with regret, guilt and sentimentality, intimately dramatised to capture those flashes of childhood, with the magical movie sequences “illuminating every detail of the scene."
Show Times: 3 - 15 August, 12:00pm; 19 - 26 August, 8:45pm
Ticket prices £ 10 (£ 8.00)