Wrapped in the Sun is a nice little debut from writer Cleo Harrington, who has a certain gift for comedy. Centering around Lucinda, a failed artist reduced to teaching crafts on a council estate, the action takes place entirely in one room of a community centre, with only Lucinda, a mannequin to which she is far too attached and a grumpy northern janitor punctuating her wait for students.
While this could become dull, the narrative is cleverly framed by the constant presence of Lucinda’s dead mother and therapist playing opposing devils on her shoulder (ably played by Irene Bradshaw and Anna Ziman respectively, though their interactions could be quicker and bitchier to really pack a punch). Although they look oddly similar, her dead mother is draped in the garish tappings of an ageing sixties child, and her therapist is a straight-laced matronly like figure - each constantly questioning and berating Lucinda as she sits alone in the hall considering, with considerable humour and a smattering of fab one-liners. how she ended up here. Nigel Osner does sterling work as her first student - having misunderstood the flyer, he arrives dressed as Zeus and ready to pose as a life-model - and is utterly hilarious.
However, there is a deeply patronising undertone to this play, and it does begin to grate - especially when the final denouement comes. Throughout, Greg Patmore as the northern janitor is used as a device to remind us we are on a council estate - he takes phone-calls from people with ‘ethnic’ names, explains that the bodily fluids haven’t been cleared from stairwells, and other such lazy stereotypes. When his relationship with Lucinda develops and he shows her some paintings which turn out to be good, I think we’re supposed to be surprised. Because he’s northern? Or common? Or what? Worse, though the publicity claims ‘but the weeping Somali woman bears a gift that will ultimately change Lucinda’s life forever’, the actress cast is British/Iranian, a noticeable difference even in a Burka. Most offensive is the ‘gift’ that she bears - a horrific, heart-breaking thing that should have elicited reactions from the characters (and indeed audience), at the other end of the scale to ‘oh good, our heroine can draw again’.
This is a decent production of a promising play - special mention to Amy Jobs for an effective and unfussy design - but I do feel that Cleo Harrington’s writing would benefit if she spent some time around the people she’s attempting to write about, and explored the full range of possibilities in their stories.
