By Grace Hatchell
Molly Windust brings her debut solo show Rockpools to Pleasance Courtyard, a darkly comic and tenderly strange exploration of womanhood, endometriosis, grief, loneliness and the private worlds we build when life becomes too much. Funny, surreal and emotionally charged, this is one of those Fringe pieces that looks small at first glance, then quietly reveals a whole tidepool of feeling underneath.
I have always thought rockpools are funny little things.
From a distance, they look small. Harmless, even. Just little puddles left behind by the sea, as if the tide rushed off and forgot to tidy up after itself. But lean in, properly lean in, and you realise there is a whole world sitting there in miniature. Shells, shadows, tiny lives, strange shapes, things hiding, things clinging on, things waiting for the water to return.
That feels like the right way into Rockpools, Molly Windust’s debut solo show at Pleasance Courtyard. It is described as darkly comic, sharply observed and surreal, exploring hoarding and endometriosis, but there is clearly more happening beneath the surface here. This sounds like a show about the small private worlds people build when the larger one becomes too difficult to live in.
And goodness, don’t we all know a little something about that?
The Woman at the centre of Rockpools is young, unhappily married, and living in the aftermath of her husband’s parents’ death. She is not grieving in the expected way. Instead, she is caring for her husband, who is struggling to cope and cannot face the rooms his parents once occupied. The house they inherit becomes more than a house. It becomes a place full of silence, memory, pressure and things unsaid. Basically, the sort of domestic atmosphere where even the wallpaper probably needs a sit-down and a cup of tea.
As her husband’s grief turns inward, The Woman begins to unravel in another direction. She is drawn to Room Number 4, and what begins as an attempt to keep life functioning slowly becomes something stranger. She fills the room with seaside objects: taxidermy seals, model boats, shells. Object by object, room by room, lie by lie, she builds a fragile refuge while her marriage quietly disintegrates around her.
There is something very sad and very human in that. Sometimes people do not fall apart loudly. Sometimes they do not smash plates, storm out or deliver a grand speech at the foot of the stairs like they are auditioning for a Sunday night drama. Sometimes they simply begin collecting things. Keeping things. Arranging things. Making one corner of the world feel controllable because everything else has slipped out of their hands.
And that, I suspect, is where Rockpools may sting.
Molly Windust, who writes and performs the show, brings a background in character comedy to this piece. She was a member of Cambridge University’s Footlights, formed the sketch duo Mudfish with Dan Bishop, and later trained on the MA Acting course at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. That mixture feels important. Rockpools does not sound like a solemn lecture with a spotlight and a chair, thank heavens. It sounds playful, odd, absurd and alive — the kind of show that might make you laugh before quietly taking your hand and leading you somewhere darker.
The piece is also informed by Windust’s own experience of endometriosis. The condition affects one in ten women worldwide, can take years to diagnose, and can have a serious impact on fertility. But Windust is clear that she does not want to write a story solely about diagnosis. Instead, Rockpools explores the emotional and physical impact of the condition alongside wider silences around women’s bodies, fertility, family and the expectation that everyone should want the same neat little life.
And honestly, there is something powerful in that.
Because not every woman wants the same future. Not every woman wants the house, the marriage, the children, the nuclear family picture with everyone smiling like they have never argued over bin day. And even for those who do want those things, life does not always deliver them cleanly. Bodies complicate things. Grief complicates things. Love complicates things. Other people’s expectations barge in wearing muddy boots and start rearranging the furniture.
Rockpools seems to ask what happens when the life you are supposed to want becomes a life you cannot breathe inside.
Windust describes the show as a “freaky take on a one woman show,” exploring womanhood and the pressure on women to form nuclear families when that is not what they want to do. She has also partnered with the scientific research project Endo1000, which is working on research into endometriosis. That partnership gives the piece an extra layer of urgency, but the show itself appears to be reaching beyond awareness alone. It is not simply saying, “Here is a condition.” It is asking how a body, a marriage, a room and a mind can all become places where secrets gather.
There is a tenderness in that, even if the show itself is sharp-edged. Perhaps especially then.
I like theatre that understands people are rarely one thing. A woman can be funny and lonely. A marriage can look intact while quietly rotting behind the skirting boards. A room can be a refuge and a warning sign. A shell can be beautiful and empty. A model boat can be charming until you realise it is going nowhere.
And a rockpool, for all its stillness, is never really still.
With co-direction from Ivan Hamshaw-Thomas and Gracie Davie, and dramaturgy from Laurie Bayley-Higgins, Rockpools promises a visually rich and emotionally charged study of loss, embodiment and the fragile worlds we create to survive. The press release describes it as being about “the ways we try to keep each other alive, in a life which has become a lie,” which is one of those lines that makes you put the kettle down carefully and stare at the wall for a moment.
So yes, this one sounds strange. It sounds sad. It sounds funny in the way life is sometimes funny when it absolutely has no right to be. And it sounds like the kind of Fringe show that might begin with odd objects and end up asking much bigger questions about womanhood, illness, loneliness and the private rooms we keep locked inside ourselves.
Pack your emotional wellies, my loves. We may be going rockpooling.
Rockpools runs at Pleasance Courtyard, Bunker 3, 60 Pleasance, Edinburgh, EH8 9TJ, from Wednesday 5th to Sunday 30th August, not including 17th and 24th, at 15:20. The running time is 55 minutes. The show is suitable for ages 16+ and contains strong language and distressing themes.
Tickets are available via Pleasance.
https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/rockpools
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