St Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, gives his name to the grubby fictional Tube station that’s the well created set in this new play from Dumfries based theatre company Fox and Hound.
Sam’s teenage son, Ian, has disappeared. He has supposedly been spotted in this London Tube station so Sam (Codge Crawford) begins making regular trips down south to try to find him. His wife Maggie (Helen Fox) does the same, though less regularly. When it dawns on Maggie that their remaining child, Charlotte, is being forgotten in the process of searching for their son, she stops. She starts to move on with her life. Sam finds this impossible and essentially gives up his own life to go an obsessive search for his son whose disappearance remains a mystery.
Sam experiences across decades, that are signalled by appropriate soundtracks, not only his own loss but the loss in its many forms felt by the play’s other characters. These extras to Sam’s personal drama are well realised through a variety of accents by Helen Fox. Fox and Hound Theatre Company has an eagle eye for their characters’ sartorial look across the range of characters from the rusty brown tones of the ‘70s to the gradual move to Sam’s mish mash busker gear.
Fox and Hound is a new Scottish company founded in 2015 whose aim is to produce theatre that is rooted in recognisable realism and they do that in spades within this hour’s drama. The human challenges of dealing with guilt, anger, closure, the fear of being forgotten are exposed without a beat being missed by Crawford and Fox throughout with emotion etched on their faces in their heartfelt performances. What is absent in this otherwise strong piece of new writing is the balance of humour. Even in life’s bleakest times it’s lurking somewhere and is a necessary seasoning to even the saddest of tales.
Sam’s own life spirals downwards with his reason to live being his futile search for his son whose own reason for leaving is never overtly revealed. Maybe the answer lies in play’s prophetic opening song from Harry Chapin The Cat’s in the Cradle.
5-27th (excl 14 &21) at 20.50