“Elysia Wilson is an engagingly vulnerable solo performer, vacillating between anger, desperation and, poignantly, misplaced hope as the show progresses”
This work-in-progress piece, written and directed by Rachel Mervis, explores the devastating impact of a young man’s chronic drug addiction on his family from the perspective of his younger sister. Using a combination of monologue, spoken word poetry and physical theatre, she unflinchingly depicts the desperate cycle of homelessness, criminality, hospital visits and betrayals as her once high-achieving brother (nicknamed ‘Frank’) spirals ever deeper into the life of an addict.
Mervis’ writing contains some intriguing ideas. One is struck particularly by the notion that Frank has a personality which is tragically predisposed to addiction – that the high he experienced off academic success and schoolyard competitiveness led to his seeking more dangerous thrills. She employs a cleverly cyclical structure, reinforcing the sense of entrapment caused by this disease. Her direction works well with sparse staging – two chairs which become a prison, a hospital bed, even a dancefloor. Elysia Wilson is an engagingly vulnerable solo performer, vacillating between anger, desperation and, poignantly, misplaced hope as the show progresses.
Inevitably, for a W-I-P show, there are areas in need of development. The choreography is somewhat indecisive: interesting ideas crop up but are not fully worked through and the physical theatre elements stray a little too close to charades, at times. The poetry requires work, often clunking slightly in its pursuit of a rhyme. Also missing is a sense of the siblings’ relationship prior to Frank’s drug problems, making it that much harder to invest in the story. One never got a rounded idea of just who it was who was being lost to these addictions. Furthermore, the show feels faintly ill-focused and episodic, lacking much of a narrative shape. The eventual climax, which centres on the poems performed throughout the show, is a little rushed and half-baked.
Even if it’s currently in its early stages, this piece is certainly one to watch.
“it doesn’t quite land a knockout punch, however, this is important and compulsive viewing”
In Joy Wilkinson’s richly entertaining new play, four women, from diverse segments of Victorian society, find solace from the tedium and oppression of their day-to-day lives in the novel world of all-female boxing. Slugging it out in the backrooms of Islington to be crowned ‘Lady Boxing Champion of the World’, they provoke an aghast (and sometimes violent) response from patriarchal, ‘polite’ society.
Cannily, Wilkinson allows the status of these spectacles to remain ambiguous. Are they a kind of proto-feminist display of solidarity and valour? An exploitative circus, choreographed, literally, by the Svengali-like Professor Sharp (an excellent Bruce Alexander)? Or, as one of the fighter’s relatives strikingly suggests towards the end, an act of mere egotism on the part of the participants? The strength of the play is in its timely suggestion that, in rigidly oppressive societies, simple solutions are hard to come by and ‘progress’ can be tricky to measure.
Wilkinson has worked extensively for television which comes across in the play’s engaging, televisual-style sharp, snappy scenes and intertwining storylines. In fact, the evening feels a little akin to a Netflix box-set (one might see certain similarities with the streaming series Glow). A steady directorial hand is provided by Kirsty Patrick Ward who stages the text with the pace and clarity it demands. Anna Reid’s set-design, somewhat resembling a boxing-ring, uses the intimacy of the Southwark’s studio space to its full effect. From a lineup of strong performances, Fiona Skinner’s brittle, defiant Polly Stokes stands out.
At times, the narrative is pursued a little too urgently. The thoughtful questions posed in the first act get somewhat submerged by the haywire over-plotting of the second: promising narrative threads are rushed through or got slightly lost. Further, whereas the play neatly navigates its individual storylines, one was eager to see more of the women together, comparing their experiences. A bit more time with the boxing matches themselves would also have been appreciated (especially if it meant further opportunity to showcase Alison de Burgh’s brilliant fight direction).
It doesn’t quite land a knockout punch, however, this is important and compulsive viewing.
