Tag Archives: Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024

THE DAUGHTERS OF RÓISÍN

★★★★

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

THE DAUGHTERS OF RÓISÍN at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

★★★★

“There’s a real active effort to get us involved in the storytelling, and this is brilliantly effective”

Aoibh Johnson’s play, The Daughters of Róisín, explores the history of church and state abuse of women in Ireland who were pregnant out of wedlock in the 20th century. Johnson performs this one-woman show which, despite dealing with a harrowing, deeply upsetting subject matter, manages to also find a real spirit of hope for a better future.

Johnson’s play moves between monologue, storytelling, poetry recital and Irish folk songs. She stands before us, wearing a white dress, using nothing but a wooden chair and a few other minor props throughout the show. The storytelling aspect focuses on a young woman, seventeen years old, who falls pregnant from a man she meets at a dance. Young women weren’t given any education about sex, and they definitely couldn’t ask any questions.

When she speaks of the young girl’s pregnancy, she calls it her ‘sickness’. The girl is locked away at home in a room with only one window, and she mustn’t go too near it in case anyone sees her. Once the baby is born she sings to it ‘Please don’t take him away’, alternating between singing it like a lullaby to the baby which she cradles and turning it out to the audience, as if pleading, begging us to help. There’s a powerful sense of activism which comes with this, as the responsibility to protect becomes a collective one.

Amidst the anger and trauma that the situation creates, there’s also a real passion and loyalty to the land, to Ireland, and this causes a major conflict for Johnson. She sings ‘Her beauty is forlorn / It’s no longer a place that I feel free to roam’ and dreams of a future where all people of Ireland have proper freedom.

Johnson does a very clever thing to avoid the show feeling totally gloomy, by switching between telling us the story and interacting with us directly. She’s not afraid to make a joke, make us laugh, ask a question to someone in the crowd. There’s a real active effort to get us involved in the storytelling, and this is brilliantly effective at making us feel part of the change, and also at including us in the important task of remembering the women who suffered.

The final reveal, which I won’t spoil in this review, gave some extra context to the piece which made it feel particularly emotional. It’s not just a play, but a protest, and one I would encourage you to go and part of.


THE DAUGHTERS OF RÓISÍN at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe – Pleasance Courtyard – Bunker One

Reviewed on 17th August 2024

by Joseph Dunitz

 

 


THE DAUGHTERS OF RÓISÍN

THE DAUGHTERS OF RÓISÍN

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THAT’S NOT MY NAME

★★★

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

THAT’S NOT MY NAME at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

★★★

“occasionally funny, often angry, frequently absurd, and sometimes quite sad”

Honestly, this one is really hard to review. Writer-performer Sammy Trotman, in her one-woman ‘not a show’ (Press copy) about the mental health system, even talks about having a reviewer in during the show in a way which reads ‘good luck reviewing this one!’. She tells us it’s not a show. And even if it is a show, who is it for? Her director, Jake Rix, who makes several on-stage appearances and tries to make sure the show gets back on track, wants to make it a show for the audience. But Trotman doesn’t really care about the audience. The show asks, amongst other things, when we make shows about our trauma, who are we making them for?

The show begins with Rix informing the audience about the content warnings. He wants to know how we feel about them. This is a show (or, not a show) about challenging the mental health system, and particularly the way that the system applies labels, which are rooted in capitalism and patriarchy. Throughout the show, Trotman dances, sings, spits out chocolate and crisps, has tantrums, strips, and dresses in a Waitrose shopping bag. It’s messy. It’s chaos. She screams and shouts in an in-yer-face sort of way, runs out of the room, speaks out text which is lyrical, rhythmical and full of poetic imagery.

Stylistically, I’d say it’s quite purposefully anti-style. Like the labels on her mental health, which Trotman protests, she refuses to put herself or this show in a box. She tells us she developed an eating disorder when she went to boarding school. I don’t know how common this is, but it’s certainly not the first time I’ve heard of this experience. She started writing comedy in a psychiatric ward last year, which has led to the creation of a show which fuses stand-up, performance art, comedy, poetry, movement, audience interaction, and shouting. Lots and lots of shouting.

It feels redundant to comment on what does and doesn’t work stylistically, because I don’t think that’s the point of the show. From my own experience, it was occasionally funny, often angry, frequently absurd, and sometimes quite sad. Trotman doesn’t shy away from the fact she’s an attention seeker, in fact she embraces it, and reminds us several times. She also acknowledges her privilege, as a white, middle class, privately educated woman, performing at the Edinburgh Festival. A lot of the show feels like she’s actively making it hard for us to watch. Whether that’s reminding us of her privilege, screaming at the top of her lungs, flirting quite menacingly with an audience member (specifically the one sat next to his partner), or an explosive pop of a crisp packet. And it is often uncomfortable viewing. Some bits are too long. The choices seem random. The structure is all over the place. I can’t say I enjoyed it. I’m not sure I’m meant to? But I’ve no doubt there will plenty of people who connect with this.

I think with more focus, more specificity, this could be a really groundbreaking piece of work. But it’s not there yet, and I’m not sure that’s the point anyway.


THAT’S NOT MY NAME at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe – ZOO Southside – Studio

Reviewed on 16th August 2024

by Joseph Dunitz

 

 


THAT’S NOT MY NAME

THAT’S NOT MY NAME

CLICK HERE TO SEE ALL OUR REVIEWS FROM EDINBURGH 2024