The working-class Paisley accent wielded by Bonnie McKay (Olivia Caw) is not one frequently heard on the stage. That absence is one of the drivers of Common Tongue, written and directed by Fraser Scott, which examines how particular ways of speaking encode entire life experiences.
It’s a great premise, but too abstract to carry a story, so it’s grafted, awkwardly, onto a tale of McKay’s intellectual and social blossoming. We follow her from early schooling, through fraught dating across the class divide, to St Andrews, and study abroad.
Olivia Caw is terrific in her bouncy, eager energy. She fully embodies not just McKay, but also her father, classmates, roommates, a boyfriend’s parents, a judge, and more, switching accents and characters with suppleness and precision. Her comic delivery is excellent, even if the jokes supplied to her are the stuff of online hyperlocal news listicles. Similarly, the fact that the central character remains flat, lacking complexity and depth, is clearly in no way her fault.
Ironically, in a play about language, it’s the script that proves the weak link. Faultless acting, a creatively appropriate tartan set by Mela Adela, subtle and effective soundscapes by Patricia Panther – all are enjoyable, but none can compensate for the absence of insight on offer here.
New life can be wrung from the classic Pygmalion storyline – plays such as Willy Russell’s Educating Rita amply demonstrate that. But while Rita’s estrangement from her roots provides bittersweet dimensionality, McKay returns from America with a newfound sense of superiority. Her encounters with everyone outside her community are broad to the level of caricature: the intended humour when she meets the boyfriend’s posh parents hinges entirely on the odd notion that affluent people don’t ever swear. Cultural observations never rise above the level of noting Americans’ unfamiliarity with “outwith” and “messages.”
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Scott’s script does call out McKay’s hypocrisy, in a welcome moment of tension, only to drop it a few lines later. Likewise, ideas about cultural and linguistic appropriation are toyed with, but not explored. Even what should have been a touchingly crucial power shift in the father/daughter dynamic withers due to thinly written characters.
Some lovely poetry is scattered among the dialogue – Burns, of course, but also some winsome doggerel – and a snappy spoken-word peroration near the end is skilful, but lacks emotional impact due to the limited characterisations. Even on the more abstract level, there’s a curious parochialism in the failure to recognise that everyone, globally, outside the hegemony of standard English, confronts these same problems, and has been forced to become adept in linguistic, class, and cultural codeswitching. If there’s a uniquely working-class Scottish angle here, Common Tongue doesn’t succeed in identifying it.
The audience in the Edinburgh performance appeared to heartily appreciate the show, which reinforces the central idea that people hunger to hear voices that sound like their own. I just wish those voices had been telling a fresher and more compelling story.
Listings and ticket information can be found here.
