Lynn Ferguson - Heart & Sole

There comes a point in Lynn Ferguson’s one-woman show, Heart and Sole, at which viewers are faced with the realisation that, amongst a cast of everyday individuals, the only sane character in the production is David, the pilchard. While making us wish that we’d seen more of David, our humanity is duly humbled.

The successful parts of Ferguson’s play are devoted to undermining our place in the food chain. Lonely Debra falls in love with a resident of the St. Andrew’s Sea Life Centre. What of it? Well, it’s a more rewarding relationship than she’s had with a person. Debra reflects that while she’ll never have a physical bond with David, “better that I want to but physically can’t, than be able to but don’t have sex” – true of her married friends, and if we’re honest, many of us.

Ferguson is a gifted storyteller whose talent seems made for one-woman theatre. Her ability to conjure characters with few devices is impressive: three words into an animal welfare fanatic’s monologue and Ferguson has crafted the personality with the precision and effectiveness of a laser-guided bomb, using only her accent. Through the equally deft construction of the characters of Debra and her friend Elaine, Ferguson conjures up workaday Scottishness faultlessly.

Nonetheless, a skeletal script struggles to do justice to the weighty themes it attempts to support; as David says when Debra is ejected from the aquarium, “I saw this coming,” and as the play struggles to its conclusion, increasingly so do we. Given his wisdom, David should know that there are plently more fish in the sea.