Contact, Glasgow review: 'gripping'

Blythe Duff delivers an astonishingly witty and complex performance in Jonny Donahoe’s new play Contact, writes Joyce McMillan

Contact, Oran Mor, Glasgow ★★★★

There’s no question of a culture war in Jonny Donahoe’s new Play, Pie, Pint two-hander Contact; indeed when the son in the play asks his mother whether she finds his generation “too woke”, she protests with typical bluntness that she’s not “a complete arsehole”.

That’s as good as it gets, though, in the fraught relationship between Blythe Duff’s magnificent Mother - permanently scarred by a shockingly violent marriage - and Mark Barrett’s Son, whom his Mother can hardly look at without fearing he will one day become his own father.

So when he tells her that his partner is pregnant, her first thought is that they should have adopted instead; and when she reluctantly agrees to weekly meetings to try to improve their relationship, he finds her, on one visit, burning all her old baby photographs of him, and of her as an adoring young mother, on the devastating grounds that both of those people are now dead.

In Ben Standish’s pleasingly slightly surreal production - with a definite touch of Caryl Churchill about it - Blythe Duff delivers an astonishingly witty and complex performance as the Mother, full of warm maternal feeling for little babies, but tragically unable to sustain that warmth towards her adult son; Mark Barrett’s Son matches her every step of the way.

And if the thought behind the play is disturbing - that some emotional wounds really may be beyond healing - it nonetheless offers a chance to share a powerful and gripping hour of fine writing with one of Scotland’s true female stars; a great actress, who is always, and unforgettably, in her prime.

Contact is at Paisley Town Hall from 20-23 October

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