The Best of the Fringe: Common Tongue Review | Katie Veitch
★★★★★
Common Tongue written by Fraser Scott and performed by Olivia Caw is hands-down my best show of the season. As a play about imperfect Scots —more specifically West of Scotland Scots —my hopes were already high. The international aspect of the Fringe is wonderfully diverse and warmly welcomed, but sometimes it feels like I’m waiting to get back to the baggage drop to hear an accent like my own again despite only being an hour or two from my own home. Common Tongue brought not just my accent to Edinburgh, but my people, my memories, my childhood and my experience beyond the small town.
Bonnie (a name my laptop just corrected four times) McKay grows up with a Burns loving Grandpa and teachers who tell her to “speak properly”. Meeting her first boyfriend’s parents as a teen causes her as much trouble as being in court for a parking fine as an adult. Crossing the pond for uni in the USA, and heading back home to hunt for a job, the way she speaks is a topic of every conversation. It’s not good enough, it’s hilarious, it’s changed, it’s fake, it’s unclear. It’s a story many of us know all too well. And as we get to know Bonnie, her fascination with words, her admiration for her Papa, her affinity for boys in Hollister polos, we get to know that the way that Bonnie speaks is a massive part of who she is.
We are often told to not be defined by our accents. But the fact is, the way we speak tells a very important story. It tells people what coast you’re from, what the people in your childhood home spoke like and what mattered to them. Your voice sounds like your friends and your favourite auntie and the thoughts in your head. It is the negative perceptions that we attach to these accents that must be shifted.
“To access success, I had to speak proper.” In America, Bonnie’s accent becomes a party trick. Back home, “You sound different, you know.” It teaches us to find pride in our identity, and to be curious about others; and think about what their voice tells us about how special they are.
Olivia Caw’s performance is outstanding. Cheered on by Nicola Sturgeon a couple rows behind me (aye, I did have a better seat than big Nicky) and awarded a prestigious Bobby award from Broadway Baby at the end of the show, her commitment to this act is adored by the audience. It’s what injects Scott’s message right into the heart. You can feel that Olivia knows Bonnie to her core due to authentic, bang on casting. The laughs are endless and the tears are unstoppable as she takes Bonnie under her wing and shouts her story from the rooftops with total pride.
Chatting with Olivia after the show, she really drove home the power in reclaiming our accents to generate unity. Common Tongue doesn’t pause on politics or football or religion, because none of them are the point. No matter where we Scots sit on these matters, we all have our speech in common, albeit with a delightful amount of variety from coast to coast.
When I asked Olivia how she thinks art can be used for resistance, her response totally enlightened me. She spoke to the recent rise of the far right, and how these people who are trying to grab the edges of their country and pull it in tight are really just trying to hold on to the smallest part of identity they have left. How they define that, by skin colour, religion, immigration or employment status, never really holds up. If they could reclaim their own voices, find pride in their own history and grow a curiosity for the voices and histories of others’, they would likely feel so much more at peace that their identity is not under threat from those at the bottom of the system.
I could write all day about our conversation: how women often face more criticism for their accent, especially as adults, and how children’s adaptability in speech is even stronger and seen as a good thing while they are still learning to speak, but ultimately, Olivia drove home a sense of pride. That the voice we speak in is for using and for listening to, not for dismissing or looking down on. Fraser Scott tells this story exceptionally well, with so much humour and passion and love, and I would recommend this play to every single person I know regardless of their interests or background.
Common Tongue is on at the Scottish Storytelling Centre every day excluding Wednesdays at 2:45pm until 31 August. It is also available to purchase in print and ebook below.
By Katie Veitch
