★★★★

“the dialogue is funny, elastic and fizzles with energy”

Contemporary living, for most, has become inextricably intertwined with technology. It crops up in more and more places, knitting segments of our lives together. In Long Distance, the phone is the connective tissue between two young queers – and the lens through which we understand them and their relationship to each other. As the play travels from meet-cute to breakup, the pair exchange text messages at significant moments in their relationship, slowly discovering more about each other.

Strong writing by playwright and director Eli Zuzovsky keeps the pace up and drops tantalizing details at appropriate intervals. The play leads its audience along the contours of the relationship, structured well to maintain an interest. Despite its static staging – the two characters never touch and look out at the fourth wall for most of the play – the dialogue is funny, elastic and fizzles with energy. Texting’s pitfalls are well documented by awkward misreadings, cringey innuendo, and awkward silences.

That energy is ably parried by the two lead performances. Jonathan Rubin crafts a stunning journey throughout the play, creating a fully formed character despite his dialogue being limited to text messages. It is a performance filled with depth and intention, and admirably executed in so much silence – each gasp, tremble, or knitted brow shares more and more about the character. Freddie MacBruce, stepping in last minute to help the show go on, is a remarkable foil – assured yet unconfident, he holds all the tensions of his character at once. The textures of the actor’s voices create a beautiful quality to the play – Rubin’s flitting vulnerability crashes into and hugs MacBruce’s nonchalant solidity. Though their dynamic starts to sink into stereotype by the end of the play, both performances remain strong, detailed, and truthful throughout.

The play has mined the possibilities of presenting text messages on stage – one of its most interesting elements is the tension between the inherently nondescript act of texting and the detail that live theatre, with all its elements, provides. Occasionally the tension jars – in translating texts for the stage, some believability is lost. There are incongruous transitions into monologues which reveal further interiority but clash against the naturalism the play seems to strive for – the drawn-out silence and resultant confusion created by a phone dying, our reliance on emojis and gifs and memes to communicate how we feel.

Long Distance is an interesting and evocative meditation on our phones and how they help and hinder us in communicating with each other. The play deliberately obscures the central relationship, limiting the couple’s interaction to the online realm. We never experience how, or if, the two interact in person. The play asks whether that is a problem at all. Is authenticity obstructed by an online setting? Perhaps not, but what the play does make clear is our increasing reliance on digital communication to connect us to those we love – and it is a timely reminder to reflect and reassess how we think about that mode of communication in our lives. A thought-provoking and timely play, Long Distance is a sobering and affecting experience.

THE BLEEDING TREE at Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★★★

“Vaguely Gothic, but down to earth; a touch of the supernatural brushing against domestic tragedy”

A crackling wail, somewhere between a synthesized didgeridoo and a death rattle, rises from the red earth, swelling into an anguished crescendo while three nameless women hiss with venom, spitting bitter fear and loathing at a corpse we cannot see. The mother and two daughters move and speak in staccato, jarring rhythms; locked in their state of shock and disbelief, dread and relief. The lifeless body is their husband and father, who gasped his last with a bullet through the neck.

This is not going to be comfortable viewing. Angus Cerini’s “The Bleeding Tree” is a hard-hitting murder ballad, poetic in its delivery yet full of raw rage. Mariah Gale is the mother while Elizabeth Dulau and Alexandra Jensen play the daughters, interchangeable and often indistinguishable from each other. The emotional power is impressive as they sway between culpability and victimhood. Their abuser, now lifeless on the ground, still torments them.

The one flaw in this otherwise impeccable hour-long play is that we are never sure whose side we are on. But then maybe that is the whole point of Cerini’s writing. The lines between the abused and the abuser become blurred. We never learn the full extent or true nature of the suffering caused by the deceased, but we are stealthily led to believe his end is justified. Yet somehow, we are not asked to judge. We are witnesses but not the jury.

Ali Hunter’s atmospheric lighting places the action in an eternal twilight. Jasmine Swan’s simple setting cleverly conveys the internal claustrophobia of these characters while also evoking the bleak terracotta backdrop of the Outback where further perils may lie. A knock at the door causes panic. The women ripple in unison as their savage secret is in danger of being discovered by their neighbours. Gale, Dulau and Jensen deftly switch into the roles of the outsiders; Mr Jones and Mrs Smith, and the postman-come-policeman who feed them with alibis and cover-ups. The beautifully flowing dialogue belies the complex issues bubbling underneath. Many a blind eye is being turned. Yet it seems that the events that led to this bloody conclusion were also equally ignored by those that perhaps should have seen it coming.

Sophie Drake’s minimal staging allows the cast to focus on the crucial and radical text. We learn what ‘The Bleeding Tree’ of the play’s title refers to, and it is quite harrowing. The protagonists may be left with mixed feelings eating away at them, from the inside out, but that is nothing compared to the literal fate of the decomposing body of evidence before them that needs to be disposed of.

“The Bleeding Tree” forces us to face important questions. Instead of offering answers it dresses them in atmospheric layers of theatricality. The result is something quite extraordinary. Vaguely Gothic, but down to earth; a touch of the supernatural brushing against domestic tragedy. Cerini writes with the pen of a poet but the mind of a crime writer. A thrilling combination that, combined with the excellent performances, is a theatrical experience that makes us look at its extreme subject matter in a new light.

Tag Archives: Lidia Crisafulli

LONG DISTANCE

★★★★

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

LONG DISTANCE at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

★★★★

“the dialogue is funny, elastic and fizzles with energy”

LONG DISTANCE at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe – ZOO Playground – Playground 1

Reviewed on 22nd August 2024

by Theo Chen

Photography by Lidia Crisafulli

LONG DISTANCE

LONG DISTANCE

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THE BLEEDING TREE

★★★★

Southwark Playhouse Borough

THE BLEEDING TREE at Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★★★

“Vaguely Gothic, but down to earth; a touch of the supernatural brushing against domestic tragedy”