Ciara @ Traverse

In Ciara, his love song to Glasgow, playwright David Harrower has created a complex character worthy of the city and a play whose ending packs a punch. Balancing humour with poetry and storytelling, Harrower has captured the tightly coiled energy of this vibrant metropolis.

The daughter of a gang leader, Ciara was protected from her father’s world growing up.  Having escaped his line of work, she finds his past catching up with her; even after death his legacy reaches the art gallery she owns and there is a price and agreement for everything.     

Blythe Duff is formidable as Ciara and the family of characters that populate this dramatic monologue.  With the strength of a goddess and not unlike the painting she so admires, she wafts amongst the columns of her warehouse pausing like a classical statue.

She is a marvel of contradictions; contained yet warm, detached but enmeshed, calm and fearless yet desperate to escape. She is a strong, canny observer who is powerless to change the order of things. 

Defined by her relationships to the men in her life, the play is also a lament for these men and not least her life for which she expects neither understanding nor pity. 

Like Ciara, who describes herself as her father’s last card, the play reveals its hand in its final moment where it all comes together in the very last sentences.  The sheer strength of her, the potential of her, Ciara threatens with promise and hope.  It’s overwhelmingly beautiful and powerful.