The Scent of Roses review: An intricate but overstuffed series of duologues

Making its Covid-delayed debut at the Edinburgh Lyceum, Zinnie Harris’s new play has a disappointingly repetitive, conversation-by-conversation structure

Neve McIntosh and Peter Forbes play a warring husband and wife in ‘The Scent of Roses’ (Tim Morozzo)

The Scent Of Roses, now making its Covid-delayed debut at the Edinburgh Lyceum, is like some kind of prismatic puzzle. Over a series of duologues, Zinnie Harris’s new play presents an interconnected cross-section of Scottish society – a husband and wife, their daughter and her ex-teacher, that teacher and her mother – with each conversation shedding fresh light on the one that’s gone before it. Like most of Harris’s plays and adaptations over the last two decades, it is intricate and emotionally intelligent – but it is also overstuffed and, like a lot of puzzles, well, a bit boring.

The first scene sees middle-aged mother Luci (Neve McIntosh) lock her cheating lawyer husband Christopher (Peter Forbes) in their shared bedroom, and refuse to let him out until he admits to his affairs. Christopher rants and rages, while Luci calmly sinks a bottle of champagne. The second sees their deranged daughter Caitlin (Leah Byrne) arrive at her former teacher’s flat, upset and inexplicably covered in blood. The third sees that ex-teacher confront her exasperated mother over her alcoholism. And so the prism shifts, scene by scene, relationship by relationship, revelation by revelation.

There is some good stuff here. Harris also directs, and her hour-and-three-quarters-long production is artfully arranged. Designer Tom Piper’s set – a realistic bedroom, the walls of which gradually lift away over the course of the evening – is a neat reflection of the characters’ preconceptions slowly being stripped from them. The five-person cast supply strong performances, too: Leah Byrne overdoes it a bit as Caitlin, and Saskia Ashdown underdoes it as her ex-teacher, but Neve McIntosh and Peter Forbes have fiery fun as Luci and Christopher, and Maureen Beattie is brilliantly blithe as the latter’s lover in the final two scenes.

After school: Caitlin (Leah Byrne, L) confronts her ex-teacher (Saskia Ashdown) (Tim Morozzo)

Neither the performances nor the production make up for the script’s shortcomings, though. Harris’s insights into our relationships – both with each other, and with the truth – are real, but her repetitive, conversation-by-conversation structure is not an interesting way of exploring them. There are just too many words and not enough plot.

Her attempts to widen the lens to encompass the climate crisis – some recurring bit about birds falling from the sky, and the hottest Scottish summer on record – and draw a messy parallel about society’s uneasy relationship with reality feel heavy-handed, too. Oh, and the show is billed as a dark comedy, but an acerbic witticism or two aside, belly laughs are few and far between.

Ironically enough, for a play that has been in the pipeline for so long, The Scent Of Roses feels like a first draft. The Lyceum reopened its doors last year with a breathtakingly bold revival of Pedro Calderon’s Life Is A Dream. It is a shame it has followed it up with something as overstuffed and underpowered as this.