Requiem: A Cellist’s Cell S1, Ep2

Cast thus far:
Janice:Matilda’s late mother
Matilda (Lydia Wilson): Possibly missing child Carys returned home
Hal (Joel Fry): Perpetual Accompaniment
PC Graves (Clare Calbraith): Bringing reality and gravitas to a gravely dangerous situation
Sylvia Walsh (Tara Fitzgerald): We are introduced to Sylvia for the first time whose name means of the forest.  Relevant of course as our first decedent Ewan’s name means “born of the yew” tree keeping with a forest theme for some of the locals.
Stephen Kendrick (Brendan Coyle): a retired local constable whose name means “the surrounding wood” keeping with our wooden town characters theme of course.
Rose & Aron Morgan: Mother of a missing child and parents to a young boy.

Flashback:
We see Matilda being punished for not knowing who her father was by school and her adoptive mother at a music conservatory.  We learn that Matilda’s parentage is questionable which adds credence to the theory that she is the missing Carys.

Now:
After a night of underground discoveries on 45″ discs, Matilda calls in the police to expound the treasure trove of evidence contained in the hidey hole to PC Graves, a local detective.  In our Sonata style Requiem we must consider in what stage of the piece we have arrived.  Holding to the early classical style we are still involved in the exposition of the piece.  Establishing the characters involved and beginning their various long-winded woodwind contributions to the overall orchestral convolution that is the small Welsh town of Penllynith.

Matilda continues to believe that she is the long lost Carys while Hal denies her claim seeking more substantiated evidence.  Matilda feels unsupported and out of sorts by the recent loss of her maternal figure who may or may not have also been her kidnapper.

Contributing to the peril of suicide inducing mirror manses we add mutilated farm animals: dead sheep in a pen, lie ‘neath Penllynith what monster dwells in its depths?  We meet Sylvia, an antiquities dealer with a seriously deep raspy voice who alludes to Matilda returning to Penllynith contributing a clue to the theory that Matilda is Carys.  Matilda needs answers and sojourns to see Rose, her possible biological mother, who is less than forthcoming about the disappearance of her daughter Carys.

Matilda, wanting more definitive proof, seeks to procure her birth certificate to see if it will offer more clues one way or the other as to her parentage.  Matilda envisages her mother’s haint throughout the episode always encouraging her to return to her music.  Matilda is then preternaturally attacked in the shower by a phantasm that directs her towards the inaccessible attic: the eponymous blue room.  The power surges coincidentally perhaps, then shorts out and our three main characters unite to attempt to discover what lies within the blockaded room.

Before they gain access to the blue room they establish that they cannot gain access from within the house nor externally as the window has been bricked shut.  An interloper makes himself known to Matilda on the grounds and she gives chase of him into the woods.  Along the way the mostly useless men are stalled when tripping upon a demonic looking crest bricked into the crest of the hill.  Precipitously Matilda manages the climb into the woods without being balked by the demonic crest.  The mansion residents hire a locksmith to gain access to the blue room at last in which Matilda has yet another vision of the blue cave and her childhood self she presumes is Carys.

Matilda also seeks to further her knowledge by interviewing the late Ewan’s sister Meredith for hints to the past.  Interrupting money seeking Australian obscure relation Nick seeking estate dispensation, Matilda inquires about the Carys situation.  Mute Meredith easily obfuscates Matilda’s goal for truth and we are left with more questions than answers.

Rose is distraught with the confrontation of her possible long-lost daughter and contemplates suicide, yet has not been attacked directly or recently by the malevolent mirrored presence so rejects death at this time.  Rose’s troubles intensify as her husband Aron tries to violently reinforce his wife’s focus on her present family rather than to get lost in her past.  Rose apologizes that he feels he always comes second to her tragic loss and promises to do better.

Matilda tries to access Rose again, admits to her view that she is Rose’s lost daughter Carys in front of her minor half-brother Davey much to his father Aron’s chagrin.  Failing this, she copes by jumping the nearest poor choice in man candy which in this case amounts to ne’er-do-well indebted trustee Nick.  Matilda dons her necklace post-coitus and then proceeds to play her cello for the first time in this episode.  Her solo leads to the dramatic death of a suicidal crow.   The shock of this petite death leads Matilda to enter the woods to seek the man she saw the night they uncovered the existence of the blue room.

In the woods, filled with bits and pieces of shattered mirrors, we find a hermit, Sean, who happens to possess the other half of Matilda’s aforementioned keepsake “Best Friends” necklace.  She immediately realizes that the hermit is friend from long ago when she was Carys at the manor.  She matches the long lost pieces of the necklace back together and simultaneously restores the electricity to the manor and the tape-deck upon which ominously intones:

Carys “Please may I go home now?”
Man “You don’t want to go yet do you Carys?  We’re going to have so much fun!”