SCOTLAND ROAD

by Hatcher, Jeffrey

In the last decade of the twentieth century, a beautiful young woman in nineteenth-century clothing is found floating on an iceberg in the middle of the North Atlantic. When rescued, she says only one word: Titanic. The woman, Winifred, is taken to an isolated spot on the coast of Maine where an expert on the sinking of the liner, a mysterious man named John, has arranged to interrogate her for six days. His goal: to crack her story, get her to confess she’s a fake, and reveal her true identity; his one clue: her enigmatic references to an unknown place called “Scotland Road.” In a stark, white room furnished only with a ship’s deck chair, John, assisted by a skeptical doctor named Halbrech, plays a cat-and-mouse game with Winifred, probing and searching for ways to break her down. But Winifred is a formidable opponent, and as John is drawn closer to her, he becomes desperate. As time runs out, Halbrech tracks down the last, living survivor of the disaster, a reclusive old woman named Frances Kittle who has lived in seclusion for seventy-five years. Miss Kittle is brought to meet Winifred to test her, but the tables turn when Winifred recalls an earlier confrontation with Miss Kittle, one that took place on board the fated liner the night is sank, three quarters of a century before. By the play’s end, one of the characters is dead, all the character’s identities have been questioned, and John and Winifred’s shared secret is revealed as they make one final journey to Scotland Road.