The Selkie
Valerie's play The Selkie premiered at The Sage, Gateshead, with well-attended, well received performances, from 7th - 9th February 2008. A two-week regional tour followed, to Whitby Pavilion Theatre, Queens Hall Hexham, York Theatre Royal, The Store at Dipton, The Maltings at Berwick, Alnwick Playhouse, The Town Hall at Bishop Auckland and Washington Arts Centre, ending with two nights at Saville Exchange North Shields. Good sized audiences and good reviews ensued, much to Valerie's relief! She hopes The Selkie will be staged again some time and reach new audiences.
Reviews
"I watched Valerie Laws' play, enchanted by this story, amused by its mix of northern charm and wit and was blown away by the live performances of The Keelers and Katie Doherty ... this was a beautifully sound-tracked, modern taken on an old myth."
Hayley Forbes, The Crack
"Szalay is totally believable as a woman veering wildly between love and resentment for her family. There are some great performances in this play but Szalay is just compelling as Roanne struggles to find answers to her turmoil and answer the mournful selkie's call."
Barbara Hodgson, The Journal
"...homegrown (i.e. North-Eastern) drama at its best... Emotions mix well with drama, pathos and humour and some beautiful music to make this a drama certainly worth netting."
Linda Douglas, Evening Chronicle
"Valerie Laws has updated the fishermen's folk story to modern day Whitley Bay and written a clever and highly enjoyable tale that encompasses three generations of working class Selkies... There are some nice twists and turns in the storyline and Neil Armstrong's direction with a minimalist set ensures the piece zips along."
Ed Waugh, The Shields Gazette
This production was by Cloud Nine and directed by Neil Armstrong, with specially written sea music performed live by the celebrated North East close harmony group The Keelers, who set Valerie's lyrics to music. They were accompanied on stage by rising singing star, Katie Doherty. The Selkie was runner up in the 2007 BBC Radio 4 Alfred Bradley Award, but was substantially rewritten for the stage production.
A highly unusual play set on the North-East coast among a present day dysfunctional family, The Selkie blends ancient northern myth, magical transformation, drama, comedy, music and song.
Roanne, an overweight, overwhelmed, underappreciated wife and mother, beset with stroppy teens, a sick dad, and a fishing-mad husband, becomes strangely drawn to the sea, and the seals that she sees there. Is there a connection to the long-ago death of her mother by drowning? Can she find freedom when so many depend on her? Gradually she comes to believe that she is a selkie, torn between the sea where she belongs, and the family who need her. The Selkie legend is of seal people who came ashore, and could cast off their skins and live as humans - but the sea was always calling them back. If a man stole and hid a selkie maiden's skin, she would have to live with him as his wife, but if she found her skin, she would go back to the sea even if she had children on land.
The cast for this production: Angela Szalay (Roanne), Tony Neilson (Kevin), Christina Berriman Dawson (Bex), Sonia Beinroth (Denise) and Jack McBride (Dad).
The idea for The Selkie was sparked off by an article I read by a teenage girl who had a row with her mother and shouted "Get a life!" at her. The next morning her mother was gone and was not seen or heard of again. The girl mentioned almost as an afterthought that her mother often went to look at the sea watching for seals, and I thought, "Maybe she was a Selkie."
The legend interests me for two reasons. First, the pull the sea exerts on us resonates with me. I've always lived by the sea and am very drawn to it, and its influence is seen in my poetry and my two previous full-length stage plays, Collingwood and Hadaway, where it forms a powerful presence in the lives of the, mostly male, characters. Depressed, or even drunk, people not infrequently walk into the cold, dangerous sea near where I live.
The second reason is that the Selkie legend is about mothers who leave their children; traditionally we find it hard to sympathise with such women. Women often tolerate incredible amounts of pressure from their families and dependents, without leaving. I wanted to explore this topic more fully, the pressure of love and guilt to stay, conflicting with longing for freedom and a life of one's own. It seems common nowadays for women to get through the child rearing years and just as they see daylight and start thinking of themselves, the demands of family intensify.
I hoped audiences will sympathise with Roanne's dilemma and also enjoy the sheer hilarious awfulness of her dysfunctional family as well as the magical, musical elements of the play. I was blown away by the audience response as it turned out, women in particular identified with Roanne and audibly recognised the awfulness of her teenage daughter, the insensitivity of her husband, and the emotional blackmail of her Dad. They were cheering her on to leave the buggers! 
Cloud Nine Theatre Company is Arts Council funded. For ten years, the region's only company to produce only new work, only from northern writers, its innovative productions take place in such unlikely places as along the length of the Roman Wall, and on the Tyne Ferry. It also has a Community Theatre arm.
The Keelers are a celebrated North-East close harmony group, who have performed at folk festivals all over Europe. They sang live, both unaccompanied and with their own music on concertina, their settings of Valerie's song lyrics.