Clare Garland. Sister to Anna Garland. In her early 30s. Lives in Highsands and repairs the lobster pots. When Highsands fell into the sea she decided to stay and now lives on her own. Many years ago Clare had a love affair with a soldier who left to fight overseas. Nothing has been heard of him since. Clare and Anna are similar – they have both lost a love but Clare becomes jealous when Robert arrives and Anna may love again. Clare stokes up Anna’s anger with Robert. Clare is well read. Frances Marwood would bring books to Highsands and taught people how to read. Character: confident and determined and will meet any challenge. But she ‘clings’ on to what’s left at Highsands, and the isolation is taking it’s toll on her mentally. She can’t let go of the hope her soldier will return. Hangs on to the past – literally. Clare is showing signs of slight eccentricity/madness when we first meet her.
Anna Garland. In her mid to late 30s. Lives in Highsands with her sister Clare and her daughter Katherine. They all help land the catch and prepare it for market. Her husband Nathaniel was lost at sea. She suspects that her husband may have been involved in smuggling activities, to supplement the family income, but she could never be certain. When in her late teens she had a ‘youthful’ relationship with Pasco Marwood, who broke her heart when he moved away. Anna recoils against the vicar’s/churches dogma. She is fighting internally with a God and nature that hurt her. Character: Ache of modernism. Daughter of the sea. Wild but calm. Hidden depths. What is beneath the surface? Can be beautiful and dangerous. Romantic. Since the loss of her husband she has lost her wonder of nature, because she lost the person she loves – twice, her husband and, when she was younger, Robert. Hangs on to the past but wants to be released – her turmoil. In wanting to let go and move away she loses her sister in law.
Pasco Marwood. In his mid 30s. Looks dark, enigmatic, raw. Son of a corn merchant (the business is called ‘Marwoods’, based in Borland Cove) but had moved away to study and then become a teacher in Overbridge. Also a naturalist. Robert’s father, Francis, has unexpectedly just died and his mother is quite frail. Pasco returns from Overbridge and is due to inherit the business, but his uncle Rupert Whithorn persuades him to take a break from teaching, sell the business and invest all the money in the uncle’s dredging company. Pasco has to take care of his frail mother and decides to suspend teaching. He also invests the money in his uncle’s business on the proviso that Rupert employs him. In his late teens he fell in love with Anna Garland, but was prepared to sacrifice that love when he moved away to pursue knowledge and learning. Character: Intellectual liberty. Free thinker. Agnostic. If God exists then he does so through intelligent design. Finds formal religion incompatible with reason. Mathematician. His father taught him a love of nature but he went beyond that love to try to understand it. Believes in progress. Everything has a solution. Modern. Science. Believes beauty can be found in an equation. (Anna makes him aware of the equation of nature). Sees Anna as an equation.
Katherine Garland. In her early teens. Anna’s daughter. On the autistic spectrum. She likes to sharpen knives. Katherine acts as a huer (fish watcher) from the cliffs at St Hedroks, looking for shoals of fish. Early in the Musical, with sea mist swirling, she hears a struggle on the cliffs towards Borland Cove, and sees through a break in the mist, a revenue man, fall from the cliffs to the beach. Katherine does not see anyone else involved in the struggle. Katherine goes down to the beach and finds the man dazed and wounded. She helps him up and takes him to St Hedrok’s. Later, without letting anyone know, she finds the revenue man’s sword and hides it away in a hollow oak at St Hedrok’s. Character: Family. Everything black and white.
Rupert Whithorn. 40s/50s. Brother of Agnes Marwood. Owns the Whithorn Ferry and Dredging Company (WFDC). Involved with the financing of smuggling, he provides capital for the purchase of contraband. Rupert persuades Pasco Marwood to sell ‘Marwoods’ on the death of Francis, and invest the money in to WFDC. Alcoholic, and is in league with, and indebted to, Bartholomew Tope. He has feelings for Clare. Character: Corruption. Selfish. Greedy.
Bartholomew Tope. Head of the Tope smuggling gang, which smuggles spirits and other contraband from France, in tubs. But the customs and revenue men are on to them, recently intercepting a trawler containing tubs of spirits. And they also discovered a cache of gin concealed in a cave beneath St Hedroks, which the Tope gang were trying to move under cover of a sea mist. (It was during this confrontation that a revenue man was thrown from the cliffs). The Tope gang activities are financed by Rupert Whithorn, and they elicit his help, sinking tubs in Highsands Bay, which will be retrieved during the dredging by WFDC.
Tope’s mother died when she gave birth to him. His father hated Bartholomew ever since. It was never proved but on his 16th birthday Tope murdered his father. Character: Evil. Greedy. Nasty. Inhumane. Believes he has a right to do what he does. Believes in some way he is doing good.
Parson Caleb Satterley. In his 30s. Vicar at the church of St Hedrok’s. Usually a bit drunk. He has some involvement in smuggling – he purchases some spirits and wine and has been allowing the hiding of contraband in the table tombs and graves at St Hedrok’s churchyard. Regularly misquotes the bible. Character: Puts on airs and graces but a fool. Funny. Appears amiable. Religious. But secretly enjoys the sins of the flesh – excess food and drink.
Next Development (CT)