Even if everything else is stolen from me, I'll remember you. Always.
I'll chain you to my thoughts and drag you through time. [p. 90]
I saw 'The Glow' at the Royal Court Theatre in 2022, when it opened, and bought the playscript the next day -- not least for the additional material.
The play opens in 1863, with spiritualist medium Mrs Lyall selecting a nameless girl from the local asylum to 'amplify' her own mediumistic talents. Mrs Lyall's son Mason finds the girl disturbing, even before her first séance, when she begins to chant Latin amid unsettling crashes. After that, things become stranger and bloodier.
1979, and a dropout named Evan is telling the girl about a mysterious figure who appears in old manuscripts: 'She looks a bit different each time but you can always tell it's her.' His source is an obscure book of folklore or mythology, by Dorothy Waites, called The Woman in Time. (Excerpts from this imaginary book are included with the play text.) The Woman -- immortal, invulnerable, singular and infinitely lonely -- knows that love matters more than anything. Her story unfolds from 1345 to 346AD to prehistory and into the future: but some characters are constant.
I did find the Afterword, in which a fictional academic is rather scathing about Waites' book and McDowall's play, entertaining: it definitely fleshed out the underlying myth of The Woman, while poking fun at conspiracy theorists and ambitious young playwrights. But the text of the play works without any of that context, and even without the impressive staging I recall.
For the 'genre picked by someone else' prompt of the 52 in 52 (2025) challenge: Nina picked 'a play' for me.
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