Fatemeh has just introduced her sister Shirin to her boyfriend and is excited to know what she thinks of him. Shirin is being guarded and holds her tongue. “Say something,” says Fatemeh in frustration.
The irony is that Shirin says nothing – not just now but in half the scenes in Sara Shaarawi’s two-hander. We are already accustomed to her silence. Fast-forwarding into the future, she and Fatemeh live, two elderly ladies, in an Edinburgh tenement without saying a word.
Their silence is troubling. Played by Lanna Joffrey and Nalân Burgess, they synchronise their daily routines in a way only two people who have lived for 43 years under one roof can. They set the table, adjust the radio and peer into their coffee grinds to predict the future, a pattern repeated throughout the play. You would say they were perfectly matched, except their lack of communication turns cosy familiarity into something sinister.
Only in the past do they talk to each other. A fresh-faced Shirin moves into her big sister’s flat with an appetite for romantic love, feminism and Farsi poetry, all minor irritations to the more conservative Fatemeh. But this is the late 1970s and of more pressing concern is the Islamic revolution brewing in their native Iran. The people are rising up, the monarchy is on the way out and Ayatollah Khomeini is about to come to power. The sisters’ free-and-easy life in Scotland is an uncomfortable contrast to the danger and political fervour at home.
Directed by Caitlin Skinner as the inaugural show in Pitlochry’s handsome twin-level studio, the Stellar Quines co-production puts a little-told story on the stage. Its four-decade span builds a fascinating reflection on the experience of exile, the sisters keeping a link with the past by being together even as they grow more distant from the land they left behind and, in their silence, from each other.
The mystery of that silence is lessened once we learn of the soap-opera betrayal that brought it about. But, with our modern-day lockdown adding another oppressive layer to their dysfunctional relationship, Sister Radio captures something tender and sad in its portrayal of ageing, dependency and being shaped by history.
At Pitlochry festival theatre until 28 September, then touring.
