You’ll find I Hope Your Flowers Bloom at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, fittingly enough, as it’s just under an hour of pitch-perfect storytelling. Raymond is small and skinny, lots of bone, not much muscle. He lives in a concrete jungle of an estate in Glasgow. A teenager trapped at home by the pandemic in his grey walled bedroom, with grey bed sheets, and a grey view, he’s not got much to look forward to. But he finds a joy in facts. Preferably facts about nature. He loves trees in particular, learning their Latin names, identifying, labelling and squirrelling away facts that help him to make his own sort of order in what feels like a nonsensical world. Until he meets Flo.
This is a beautiful story, beautifully told, of a young working class man drifting downstream with nothing much to anchor him until the impulsive impetuous Flo unlocks the beauty in nature he’d known was there, but needed permission to see. Written and performed by Raymond Wilson, the production is simply staged: the only set, some stacked outsize cubes that play both concrete jungle and nature’s majestic sprawl.
The magic’s in the script, the story and the just sentimental enough direction by Fiona McKinnon). Wilson’s script is economical, lyrical, tentative but tenacious, unflinchingly honest, and full of heart. It sketches a story of a young man trying to find his way in a life that doesn’t feel brimful of opportunities – unless you’re happy staying home and watching daytime TV. But through his on-off whirlwind wannabe romance, he discovers not only the beauty that lies in others but starts to find the beauty in himself. I Hope Your Flowers Bloom is a little slice of Fringe magic.
I Hope Your Flowers Bloom runs until Sun 27 Aug 2023 at Scottish Storytelling Centre – Netherbow Theatre at 16:00