Tally’s Blood – what a great play to revive!
Not just because it’s an epic, romantic and very funny Scottish family saga which few people could fail to be thoroughly engaged by, but because its timeless story of migration still speaks to the social and political background of the present.
First staged over thirty years ago at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, playwright Ann Marie Di Mambro’s masterpiece draws on her own family background in a Scottish-Italian family, and especially on what happened to her dad during the Second World War.
It’s a little-known fact of history that settled Italian migrants who were part of the UK’s local communities in the early 20th century were suddenly treated as potential enemy combatants when Italy entered the war. Italian men were arrested and interned, and many were sent to Canada.
Di Mambro’s father, like Massimo (Andy Clark), the patriarch of the Pedreschi family in her play, narrowly avoided the sinking of the Arandora Star by a U-boat, in which hundreds of Italian and German internees (and POWs and their guards) lost their lives.
Yet Massimo’s father was lost on that boat, and together with the death of his brother Franco (Paul J Corrigan), a mark of grief is left on the family as they try to carry on with their lives in Scotland after the war.
Massimo and his fierce, determined wife Rosinella (Carmen Pieraccini) are at the heart of what’s ultimately more romance than tragedy, as Franco’s doomed relationship with local woman Bridget (Dani Heron) is replaced by the romance between Bridget’s younger brother Hughie (Craig McLean) and Rosinella and Massimo’s niece Lucia (Chiara Sparkes).
The only thing which stands in their way is Rosinella’s own snobbery against British people, which no doubt comes from her own place of hurt.
Set mostly in the family shop in a town in the West of Scotland, and partly in Italy, Di Mambro and director Ken Alexander have revived a play which is timely, touching, whipcrack funny and recommended to everyone.
Tally’s Blood is at Perth Theatre until Saturday September 30, then at Adam Smith Theatre, Kirkcaldy, on Tuesday 3rd and Wednesday 4th October, then touring Scotland.
