ScotsGay Magazine

****

Playgroup are a Cork based group, so the story of the first British woman to swim the English Channel might not seem the most obvious story for them to tell. However writer and performer Lynda Radley came across a photo of Mercedes Gleitze in Cork City Library and was drawn to the story. And quite a story it is too. It seems that Gleitze swam not only the Channel but pretty much anything else that was going. This is a very clever piece that melds both what is known of the woman with what Radley has managed to find out about long distance swimming. In some ways it should not work, the story of a presumably muscular woman of German extraction being told by a slight woman with a lilting Irish voice, but it does. A lovely story from a fine writer. I will certainly be looking out for future work by her.

Martin Powell

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