“generates a number of laughs whilst posing quite a few discussion points about the world we live in”
Often millennials are seen as living the life of revelry with few cares and responsibilities. However, aspiring actress Lucy Winwood is struggling with very real financial difficulties which leave her unable to pay her burgeoning bills. With the bank nagging and a lack of castings she decides to search the web for a get quick rich scheme and stumbles upon a foot fetish website. The temptation to make big money from murkier waters seems all too convenient. However when a client wants to meet her in the flesh Lucy questions whether ‘degrading’ herself in front of someone is a moral or ethical approach to embark on.
Written, produced and directed by duo Emma Brown and Lawrence Smith, Feet is a piece which generates a number of laughs whilst posing quite a few discussion points about the world we live in. Brown plays the distinctly likeable Lucy who like many others is concerned about the uncertainty of her future and graduate life. When snapping her feet, Lucy isn’t sexually wheedling but instead lets the photos do all the talking. To her it’s a way of earning money, certainly more than she gets working at the supermarket. Her partner Smith switches smoothly between characters as he shifts from controlling boyfriend Ben to various clients from all walks of life. The duo nail the tone perfectly. It’s an uplifting insight into someone progressing in a little-understood profession.
The cast engineer the moves between locations with spot-on lighting cues and music. This allows the audience to dip into different aspects of Lucy’s life with ease whilst keeping the focus on her. Recorded voice-overs are cleverly woven into the piece as a way of representing characters such as Lucy’s father, friend, phone messages and her inner thoughts. At times it almost feels like a sitcom. However, it’s when the play comes to a close that the plot strands collide and things stumble a little. The last five minutes lack tautness and the result is an abrupt ending with loose ends. As a whole I’m impressed with the places this piece ventures. From financial struggles, to graduate life, to the world of sex work, to the acceptance of nudity onstage, to revenge porn.
“the force and passion of the acting, ensures Dark Vanilla Jungle is a powerful hour and a half of intimate theatre”
Philip Ridley’s Dark Vanilla Jungle is without question a harrowing theatre-going experience. Running at over an hour and half with no interval, the play is a screaming, hysterical punch to the audience’s gut. Chronicling a young girl’s life of abandonment, sexual abuse and eventual psychotic breakdown, it goes without saying, Dark Vanilla Jungle is not for the faint of heart.
With staging, lighting and music kept to the barest of minimums, the play consists of a single actress performing a monologue as 16 year old Andrea. Her futile attempts to find love denied to her early in life, her parents abandonment and the abuse at the hands of her boyfriend cause Andrea to suffer several psychotic episodes. Culminating in her belief that she is married to an injured comatose solider in a local hospital, the play is a tightly wound downward spiral of the human psyche.
The brutal plot and minimalist staging results in the play being entirely dependent upon its lead actress. Katie Bottoms gives a blistering performance as Andrea, able to capture the sweetness of a young child and the brutal hostility of a suffering teenager. Her portrayal leans more on the unhinged elements of Andrea’s personality; in rare moments of total lucidity, she appears to turn on her audience, shouting in the face of the poor unsuspecting front row. Coupled with such a closed in theatre space, the work creates an atmosphere of increasing claustrophobia as our protagonist’s life spins further out of control.
The play is at times episodic, tumbling from one horror to the next. However, Bottom’s visceral performance allows the audience to follow Andrea’s scattered and fragmented thoughts. Her clear attempts to inject some levity and even comedy into Andrea allows the audience to breathe easy before the story inevitably takes a turn for the worse.
There is little subtlety or symbolism in the play’s portrayal of a sexual abuse cycle. Ridley’s work leaves little to the imagination in terms of the impact that abuse is having on the protagonists psyche. The play never attempts to hide the horror of such acts of violence, and while this aspect of the work is undoubtedly difficult to watch, the lack of gratuity or mystery in it provides a clear view of what some of the most vulnerable children in society are exposed to.
The play is a hard watch. With the intensity of Bottom’s performance, the graphic nature of the content and the dark progression of plot, at times the play appears to be punishing its audience. However, the force and passion of the acting, ensures Dark Vanilla Jungle is a powerful hour and a half of intimate theatre.
