Water Colour review – an elegant, expertly handled study of depression
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- Water Colour won best new play at the 2026 Cats awards, with the review praising its "unusual plotting" built "with the elegance of a figure of eight".
- Playwright Milly Sweeney charts how everyday pressures — finishing an art degree show, starting a new job — can escalate depression into suicidal ideation.
- Molly Geddes plays Esme, an art student isolated at Glasgow School of Art, while Ryan J Mackay plays Harris, a kitchen porter at a Michelin-star restaurant.
- The two characters are strangers until a single crossing point where one inadvertently helps the other "at the point of greatest need," then the play loops back to reverse their circumstances.
- The production is a joint venture between the Byre theatre, Pitlochry Festival theatre and the Traverse, directed by Sally Reid.
- Geddes and Mackay narrate each other's stories and play the other's antagonist — she his "tyrannical head chef," he her "opinionated tutor" — creating the illusion of simultaneous timelines.
- Water Colour runs at Traverse theatre, Edinburgh until 30 August.
Why it matters: For a play about depression and suicide to be named best new play at the Cats while earning praise for its "lightness of touch" is a notable tonal balance: the source highlights structural confidence and mutual-support framing rather than the misery many mental-health dramas default to. Co-production across Byre, Pitlochry Festival and the Traverse gives a young playwright reach across Scotland's touring circuit, with audiences able to catch the run in Edinburgh through 30 August.
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