One of the many reasons I like the Gwyn Hall is that it sells beers by local craft brewery Neath Ales. And we weren’t even ten minutes into the performance of Windsongs of the Blessed Bay when I was glad I’d brought in some alcohol (in a plastic glass, obviously).
It started well enough. Swansea folk singer Andy Tamlyn Jones, who wrote the score for the ‘play’, opened with a beautiful song about Cardigan Bay, where the story is set. Then the spotlight shines on an old fisherman in the form of a puppet, operated by two of the actors (whose presence didn’t detract at all from ‘Grandfather’s’ scene). No sooner are we introduced to the old man’s blind granddaughter, Betrys, than he dies. And we find out that she is all alone in the world. I took a large swig of beer to appease my emotional trauma.
But what followed was an engrossing – both moving and comic – performance by a multi-talented, charismatic cast which delighted the small audience of all ages.
“Mad like her mother, lost like her father” trill the three talking heads, the village gossips, which appear in the background. In these, writer Professor DJ Britton, Director of Studies in Creative Writing at Swansea University, has created a kind of Greek chorus crossed with Dylan Thomas characters – to great effect. It seems that Betrys, played convincingly and engagingly by Gwawr Loader, is not a popular person.
Betrys sets out on her grandfather’s boat, Maid of Gwalia, to follow his dream of one last catch. She is accompanied by a gannet, which she calls ‘Pinky’, and which seems to know far more than it is letting on.
On her journey the young girl meets a range of characters from Welsh myths and history: Jenny Jones from Talyllyn who followed her husband around the battlefields of Europe including Waterloo, Celtic god Bran the Blessed and Welsh-born Australian bushranger Moondyne Joe who amusingly squawks when he tries to swear. Is she dreaming or are they really there?
Two of the funniest scenes involve Gareth y Gannet, the bird-king of Grassholm Island, who has a kind of avian Zoolander walk off with Pinky, and Annie Gwen Jones, the Donetsk-based governess of the children of Merthyr industrialist John Hughes, who does a breath-taking tango with Moondyne Joe.
Beautiful Saint Bride, with her long red hair, takes the form of a puppet. She and all the other marionettes (as well as the costumes and set) in the production have been created by Newport-based designer Bethany Seddon, with advice from Singaporean puppet maker Benjamin Ho.
One of the themes of the story is oftravelling Welsh men and women and we learn that “there are many Welsh people in Singapore”.
“Wherever we look for beauty, we find filth,” says Saint Bride. Pollution and rubbish gets washed onto the boat. The characters don’t shy away from social comment. Banker JP Morgan talks about Wales’s industrial heritage not being what it was, while the 1996 Sea Empress oil spill in West Wales also features and is used most effectively to describe Betrys’s own situation: “Why am I always cast out?” she asks. The tanker was salvaged, refitted and renamed and continues to sail – but is still banned from entering Milford Haven.
Betrys doesn’t find the last great catch. “Maybe you’re looking for the wrong things,” says Pinky. We also learn why she and her mother were cast out of the village. But the play does have a happy, if unexpected, ending.
I also didn’t expect the sad start but this was a hugely enjoyable performance. With music that washed over you and some beautiful singing from Gwawr Loader, a stellar cast featuring BAFTA-winning Richard Nichols, and an introduction to some of Wales’s lesser-known historical characters not to mention some great laughs, this is an engaging couple of hours for all the family.