Remembering Annabel explores memory and regret

Source: The List (Issue 684)
Date: 27 July 2011
Written by: Laura Ennor

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This article is from 2011.

Remembering Annabel explores memory and regret

Edgar Allan Poe-inspired show by tipped Scottish company

Young company Cathartic Connections, all students or graduates of Queen Margaret University’s well regarded drama and performance courses, already have something of a home team advantage in the theatrical bazaar that is the Fringe. Perhaps more important, though, is the clutch of admiring reviews for their 2010 debut, Pale Moon, which was praised for the way it successfully combined textual with physical elements, and a gutsy vigour with a meaningful message.

Hoping to recreate that success this year, the eight performers and one lead playwright eventually settled on Edgar Allan Poe’s poem ‘Annabel Lee’ as a stimulus for this year’s show. ‘It has a lot of powerful imagery and is really quintessentially Poe,’ says company member Andrew Simpson, explaining how the group, attracted by the poem’s noirish feel and themes of memory and regret, then sought to turn it into a story with something relevant to say about the modern world.

Simpson describes their protagonist as ‘a fish out of water in his own mind,’ a humdrum bailiff with a wild past, who goes on a vivid journey down the rabbit holes of his own mind, inspired by memories of a lost love.

theSpaces on North Bridge, 0845 557 6308, 8–13 Aug, 3.05pm, £7.50 (£5). Previews 5 & 6 Aug, £5.