Dear Lucy...

Edinburgh, Scotland

To stand out on the Royal Mile in the Fringe is no mean feat. You’re competing with a herd of human cows, a man dressed as a giant squirrel, more acappela than if Rebel Wilson was there herself, an almost excruciating amount of musical theatre, and festival goers flocking in their hundreds and thousands. A gaudy spread of posters wallpapers the city, managing to plaster every square centimetre of pillar, post and phone box. However, a simple shade of beige still manages to shine through.

A young lady was standing calmly, wearing a classic, pale, old-fashioned dress, with her hair neatly pinned. After asking about her play, I was reminded that sometimes the most amazing stories are those which keep quiet and are tucked away underneath our noses.

What is the story behind your play, Dear Lucy...?

My grandmother found a shoe-box in the back of her mother’s wardrobe when she died. In the box was a whole load of letters and photographs that she’d never shown to anyone before. They were letters she’d received from six different men who were on the front during the First World War – her brother, her fiancé, her two cousins, the vicar’s son, and her cousin’s friend. She lost her brother and her fiancé in the last three months of the war, and then actually ended up marrying her cousin’s friend. We have all those letters of their correspondence, so it’s really interesting to see their relationship and how they started. So, the play is basically goes from Armistice Day all the way up to 1927, which was the year she got married.

I play my great-grandmother in the show

Rachel explained why the decision to marry wasn’t an easy one for her great-grandmother.

She lost the love of her life. She had a job in a bank and was told that, if she wanted to get married, she would have to give up her job. She didn’t want to do this because she was very independent, and she didn’t really find anyone she wanted to marry, so she kind of married because society told her to.

It is a family affair.

It’s a very personal story. I play my great-grandmother in the show, my mother has written it and produced it, my sister has written the music for it, and we’ve got my cousin in the show as well – there are a lot of family members involved. It’s a passionate piece.

How have you found being so emotionally invested in the story which you are performing?

It’s been quite a turbulent journey – we later discovered, from interviewing my Nan about Lucy, that she might have been bipolar. She would go from being through the roof happy to stone cold silent and depressed, so it’s been quite difficult. Trying to portray that has been really difficult as well. But it’s such a challenge and I am enjoying doing it so far.

The stories of plain paper sheets and handwritten letters are intensely coloured with the love, loss and legacy of an individual and a family.