Tracks of the Winter Bear, Traverse Theatre, review: Two short plays with emotional impact and bitter humour

Directors Zinnie Harris and Orla O’Loughlin imbue each with a thread of snow-frosted, elegiac wonder

Photo credit Mihaela Bodlovic (Mihaela Bodlovic)

Christmas tradition at the Traverse, Edinburgh’s destination new writing theatre, has been to eschew a seasonal panto for somewhat classier fare – usually two Christmas shows, one for kids and one for adults.

This, 2016’s grown-up offering, is actually two shorts from the renowned Scottish playwrights Stephen Greenhorn (Passing Places, Sunshine On Leith) and Rona Munro (The James Plays), told with the same cast on the same distinctive strip of catwalk stage running between two banks of seats.

In Greenhorn’s first act, Deborah Arnott’s rough but damaged Shula hibernates in bed, attempting to come to terms with the death of her closeted lover Avril (Karen Bartke), hopping through narrative time in a manner which brings the joyous optimism of young love and the emptiness of death together in heartbreaking fashion. Munro’s piece is extremely strange, with Kathryn Howden’s Jackie – the rough-edged Mother Christmas of an imaginary Highland winter wonderland visitor park – pursued by Caroline Deyga’s escaped polar bear, who takes on the final emotions of the men she eats (of the nine cast, directors and writers here, only Greenhorn is male).

One is played for emotional impact, the other for bitter humour, but directors Zinnie Harris and Orla O’Loughlin imbue each with a thread of snow-frosted, elegiac wonder.