Water Colour

Water Colour brings together two lives shaped by pressure: a girl at art school struggling with her mental health and an aspiring chef working in a professional kitchen. Their lives intersect through two attempts to take their own lives, exposing questions of self-acceptance, pressure, imposter syndrome and the desire to succeed while coming from a working-class Glasgow background.

The acting is beautiful. Despite a fire alarm interrupting the performance, Molly Geddes and Ryan J Mackay both played fantastically, delivering an enormous performance. The emotional weight never feels like something they are merely announcing; it is carried through the performances themselves.

The production is simple but so effective, and the set follows the same principle. Nothing is overcomplicated. The two actors populate each other’s worlds as well as their own, with the simplicity of the staging giving them room to do the work, and they do it exceptionally well.

The writing is also very good, balancing some genuinely funny Glaswegian dialogue with some very heavy material. The two stories gradually fold into one another, without the structure ever becoming more important than the people in it.

A simple production with enormous performances. Beautifully effective.

Water Colour by Byre Theatre in association with Pitlochry Festival Theatre and Traverse. Credit Tommy Ga-ken Wan.