When Oliver Emanuel was taken by brain cancer at 43, one friend observed that the playwright had “taught us how to die”. By all accounts, Emanuel lived his final months with humour and pragmatism. What is curious is how much of the substantial body of work he left behind is preoccupied by grief. In plays such as Dragon and I Am Tiger, he returned to it repeatedly.
Thus it is with this posthumous chamber musical, although at first it does not seem so. Written with Gareth Williams, whose piano ballads are a lively mix of the heartfelt and wry, it begins as a love story told through the medium of paper. With every ticket, menu, shopping list, letter and origami bird comes a staging post in the romance between neighbours, one a jilted lover (Christopher Jordan-Marshall), the other a go-ahead journalist (Emma Mullen).
It is a fertile theme, one that finds space for a song about George Wylie’s full-sized paper boat that set sail on the Clyde in 1989, a symbol of old industry and new imagination. Like the pages of a book, filled with emotions, insights and ideas, paper organises our thoughts, defines us and carries us into the future.
The theme gains in resonance when we connect these ephemeral scraps to a past we can never return to. A History of Paper moves from the airy charm of a pop song to the unsayable devastation of unexpected loss: when tragedy strikes, Jordan-Marshall, like the boy in Dragon, loses the capacity to speak.
In Andrew Panton’s sharply paced and uncluttered production for Dundee Rep and the Traverse, Mullen and Jordan-Marshall give gorgeous performances through a series of sweetly sung duets and half-acted, half-narrated encounters, all fizz and fun until they are not. It is a lovely piece of work, all the more poignant for Emanuel’s loss.
• At the Traverse, Edinburgh, until 25 August; then at Dundee Rep, 29-31 August
