If you could have one wish, what would it be?
Zoe is about to head off to university, assuming she’s got the grades. Dad’s gilding business is struggling but they don’t talk about that. Summer is here and everything is about to change. Hopefully. When Silvain passes out against their door, Zoe and dad take him in and care for him – a simple act of kindness that has unexpected consequences. As a token of his gratitude, Silvain’s friend, Dennis, offers dad a wish. But all wishes come with a price. Gold does not glitter. Gold just blinds.
An exploration of class, care and consequences, This is a Gift by Kolbrún Björt Sigfúsdóttir is a modern take on the Midas myth set in Leith.
One of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 37 plays and longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Playwriting, has its world première.
A Pitlochry Festival Theatre Production
CastZoe Blythe Jandoo
CreativesWritten by Kolbrún Björt Sigfúsdóttir
Director Sam Hardie
Set and Costume Designer Natalie Fern
Lighting Designer Peter Fennell
Sound Designer Niroshini Thambar
Image Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
Zoe is about to head off to university, assuming she’s got the grades. Dad’s gilding business is struggling but they don’t talk about that. Summer is here and everything is about to change. Hopefully. When Silvain passes out against their door, Zoe and dad take him in and care for him – a simple act of kindness that has unexpected consequences. As a token of his gratitude, Silvain’s friend, Dennis, offers dad a wish. But all wishes come with a price. Gold does not glitter. Gold just blinds.
An exploration of class, care and consequences, This is a Gift by Kolbrún Björt Sigfúsdóttir is a modern take on the Midas myth set in Leith.
One of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 37 plays and longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Playwriting, has its world première.
A Pitlochry Festival Theatre Production
CastZoe Blythe Jandoo
CreativesWritten by Kolbrún Björt Sigfúsdóttir
Director Sam Hardie
Set and Costume Designer Natalie Fern
Lighting Designer Peter Fennell
Sound Designer Niroshini Thambar
Image Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
"creeps into your heart and slowly squeezes it in a golden vice."
★★★★★ All Edinburgh Theatre
Touching on so many important and very apt subjects it was so well imagined, executed, and planned – this play truly is a gift.
★★★★★ North West End
In Sam Hardie’s perfectly paced production, though, the beauty of Sigfusdottir’s writing and Blythe Jandoo’s performance shine through; in a show that becomes a small but perfect hymn to life, and to how – in exchanging our lives and our living world for cold, hard gold – we never know what we’ve got, until it’s gone.
★★★★ The Scotsman
While all that glitters is not consistently gold, though with Kolbrún Björt Sigfúsdóttir’s This Is A Gift, there is a shimmeringly triumphant reimagining of the Midas myth at the heart of new writing in Scotland. Gilded at its edges, it’s a reminder that myths endure not because they are grand, but because they speak to the quiet tragedies of everyday life; fluid in a way most contemporary stories could never even conceive. And in Jandoo’s hands, Zoë’s story glows with a light that is both beautiful and blinding.
★★★★ Corr Blimey