Let me tell you about a play that made me rethink everything I thought I knew about grief, family dysfunction, and the art of aging gracefully. Cathy, the new offering from Eilidh Loan, isn’t just another slice-of-life comedy—it’s a masterclass in how to weaponize vulnerability while keeping the audience laughing. And if you ask me, that’s the real trick. Because when you’re staring down the barrel of a midlife crisis, who wants to be told to ‘smile through the pain’? This play dares to let its protagonist scream into the void, and somehow, that’s hilarious.
What makes this particularly fascinating is the deliberate choice to center a woman in her 70s as the emotional nucleus of the story. Elaine C Smith’s Cathy isn’t some frail caricature of old age; she’s a woman who’s spent decades sharpening her tongue like a scalpel. Watching her deflect questions about her late husband’s funeral with biting one-liners feels less like comedy and more like a survival tactic. I’ve seen too many plays where older characters are either saints or punchlines, but Cathy is neither. She’s a human being with a full emotional arsenal, and that’s what makes her so terrifyingly real.
Now, let’s talk about family dynamics because, honestly, who doesn’t have a Cathy in their life? The play orbits around Cathy’s relationships with her daughter Flo (Michele Gallagher) and granddaughter Amy (Chloe Hodgson), creating this toxic Venn diagram of grief. Flo’s Catholic guilt clashes with her husband Colin’s (Alan Orr) Protestant pragmatism, while Amy’s pregnancy becomes both a symbol of hope and a ticking clock. It’s a tightrope walk between humor and heartbreak, and the writers manage to keep the tension humming without ever letting it collapse into melodrama. But here’s the thing: I kept wondering, why does it matter if Cathy and Flo reconcile? In a world where family feuds outlive generations, does a Christmas truce really feel earned?
The set design—switching between Cathy’s front room and a charity shop—feels like a metaphor for the characters’ lives. Secondhand furniture, secondhand relationships, secondhand grief. Sally Reid’s Lizzie, the charity shop worker, becomes a silent observer to this cycle, which raises a deeper question: When does mourning become a performance? The play’s biggest flaw, in my opinion, is that it leans too heavily on the ‘gallows humor’ trope. Death is a punchline here, but at what cost? I found myself wondering if the laughs were undercutting the gravity of the situation, or if that’s precisely the point.
What many people don’t realize is how rare it is to see older women portrayed with such unflinching complexity. Cathy isn’t here to teach us lessons; she’s here to remind us that grief doesn’t come with a manual. And yet, the play’s resolution—a Christmas gathering that feels more like a group therapy session than a celebration—left me conflicted. On one hand, it’s a touching reminder that life goes on. On the other, it feels like a cop-out. If you take a step back and think about it, isn’t that the tragedy? We’re all just trying to survive, and sometimes survival looks like a half-hearted smile at a funeral.
A detail that I find especially interesting is how the play uses the charity shop as a space for reinvention. Lizzie, the shop worker, becomes a kind of Greek chorus, pushing the story forward while the main characters wallow in their pain. It’s a clever narrative device, but it also speaks to a larger cultural truth: We’re all just trying to sell our stories to someone who’ll buy them. And in the end, isn’t that what Cathy is doing? Trying to sell her grief to an audience that might not even want to listen?
