Folk

In Folk, Sister Winnie is a merry nun who shares a love of folk music with Stephen, who we might say suffers a kind of social anxiety. Kayleigh is a 15-year-old “hooligan” (Sister Winnie’s words) who ostensibly comes crashing through the window of Stephen and Winnie’s regular, rhythmic folk nights held inside Winnie’s living room. It’s in this room that the entire action of the play passes, and it’s simultaneously a jolly and sobering time.

Genevieve Lemon embodies Sister Winnie with a rare realness. From lights up to lights down, her performance is authentic. Hugh O’Connor, set and costume designer, has created a fabulous living room and costume for Lemon that helps greatly to characterise her visually, using religious figurines, smoking window and wallpaper. She sidesteps churchly orthodoxy when she asks Stephen not to play something holy but “wholly inappropriate”. The feeling we get is that her arms are open wider than an albatross’ wingspan. There is something so cheesy yet so unashamedly alluring about Lemon’s performance and Winnie’s character that the play could be recommended on this duet alone.

Libby Asciak (Kayleigh) and Gerard Carroll (Stephen) both play quieter characters, far less comfortable in their own skin. They are coaxed from this by Sister Winnie over the course of the play, and we see Tom Wells’ characteristic themes: oddness, estrangement and harmony. Asciak gives a fun rendition of a 15-year-old at a series of no-through-roads. Carroll’s performance starts at a series of dad joke-ish moments but warms into an understandable and touching journey. 

Terence O’Connell’s direction is tight. Still, something about it doesn’t reach the highs and lows great theatre can, but it’s difficult to point to this or that as a shortcoming. This being said, the sense of intimacy with a muddled assortment of east Yorkshire folk and their strumming, singing, spoon-playing, and learning of the tin whistle is heartwarming. To miss Folk is to miss Genevieve Lemon as Sister Winnie, and that would be a major folk pas.