“Ailin Conant’s slick direction keeps the frequent scene changes characterful, allowing the energy to consistently simmer”
There are some words which don’t quite fit into an English definition, like schadenfreude (pleasure from someone else’s misery) or kummerspeck (the weight you put on from stress eating). Dipika Guha’s stellar new play demonstrates how ‘gaman’, too, is a word that cannot be served by our standards, and delivers it all in a mighty allegory about fish.
The Art of Gaman follows the journey of Tomomi as a young girl arriving in New York from Hiroshima through the subsequent sixty years of her life, and explores huge and complex themes of identity, sexuality, gender roles, purpose, and unfulfilled dreams. She finds herself desperate to become an actress and share her story, but hindered by the social and cultural expectations of women, as well as the hostile attitudes towards the Japanese during and after the Second World War. Guha’s script manages to deftly navigate these lofty concepts with care and wit; it’s rich with metaphors about koi fish, radios, and sunlight, and creates a vocabulary of textual references that layer on new meanings when called back to throughout. Unfortunately, however, a few fluffed lines from the actors occasionally prevent the delivery from landing with the impact that was no doubt intended.
Additionally, the scenes often felt quite filmic in their brevity and left a lot of momentous choices that the characters make to happen off stage. Luckily, Ailin Conant’s slick direction keeps the frequent scene changes characterful, allowing the energy to consistently simmer. This is aided by Helen Coyston’s smart and purposeful design which uses translucent curtains to instantaneously convey a number of locations and atmospheres. The performances from the whole cast were tremendous, particularly from You-Ri Yamanaka who primarily plays Tomomi – in an intimate space like Theatre503, the fact that she felt continuously spontaneous and authentic is all the more commendable. The other actors were tasked with depicting a variety of characters each throughout the story; Philip Desmeules and Alice Dillon especially succeeded in imbuing each one with an identifiable history from the moment they stepped into the scene, portraying exceptionally detailed and nuanced people in an instant.
Gaman is presented in the play as something beautiful being born out of an arduous struggle, like how carbon needs to be placed under immense pressure to become a diamond. The Art of Gaman is immensely ambitious in its scope and themes but largely achieves gaman itself, and delivers on those ambitions with aplomb, and in doing so provides a platform for a story that is often ignored and marginalised.
“moments of brilliance bounce straight into the laps of the audience”
Alison Carr’s intricate and confident drama, exploring all the complexities of being and feeling vulnerable, the restrictive definitions of femininity and womanhood, and feeling trapped by your circumstance, delivers across the board. Its pace escalates as the plot thickens, handled expertly by a strong cast of three, and moments of brilliance bounce straight into the laps of the audience.
We enter to washes of sea sounds, setting the scene of this uniquely English seaside town. Jac Cooper’s sound design is exactly what this production needs – the soundscapes launch Claire’s opening monologue into an optimistic stratosphere, and later underscoring at climaxes of tension immerses the audience in the characters’ distress. Carr cleverly and subtly weaves in the darkness that is revealed more clearly in the second half of the play, with double meanings and seemingly offhand remarks. This is the sign of a writer who cares about discussing people in detail. Beginning with Claire’s end is utterly bittersweet and careful. Later, when her mother Maeve defends her daughter’s character, we believe her words, having seen Claire articulate what she feels like when she is free. This makes the play’s slow twist all the more crushing – Claire’s actions are not so difficult to understand. The hard issues in Caterpillar are never portrayed crassly.
Judith Amsenga delivers a stoic performance as Claire. She disrupts any camaraderie between Maeve and Simon with jarringly harsh remarks, and is relentlessly difficult to like. At times, this was played too extremely – but director Yasmeen Arden’s decision to go too far rather than not far enough is what the piece needs. Simon’s twisted speech about the spotlessness of his deceased ‘girlfriend’ later brings home how necessary it is to have overtly dislikeable, but still wroughtly complex, female characters. It’s a challenge to audiences, who are used to women quietly holding the fort, while other people and things – including their own self esteem and mental health – have the freedom to crumble around them. Maeve, a single parent, and Claire, an unhappy mother, battle one another because they have forever been fighting the war of expectation; of what society wants from them, and says will make them happy.
Tricia Kelly’s emotional range as Maeve is riveting. She cuts through the play with excellent comic timing, which mixes in with her own quiet suffering, as she recovers from a stroke. Kelly holds the stage when on the phone to her son-in-law and grandson, and her intonation and physical flair are entrancing to watch. Maeve pressures herself to keep a clean, lighthearted and welcoming home environment, which she extends to her guest at the b&b. Alan Mahon peels back Simon’s layers to reveal an altogether more sinister core beneath his battered hang-glider. His own low self-esteem, again deftly introduced by Carr in his first conversation with Claire about a reservation mix-up through her front door, causes him to fetishise and idealise women, to seek those who are vulnerable in order to strengthen his own ego. It’s close to the bone, but it’s not unfamiliar. The best scenes occur when Simon plays alongside each of the women. These jousting matches are well-placed in the play, and Arden plots them well in the space.
Holly Pigott’s set and costume design is a harmony of sunny brights and pastels, which beautifully highlights and offsets the stage action. Some needed space is niftily created by way of a further entrance/exit, taking the characters ‘outside’ – both an escape from their claustrophobia, and a reminder of it. Ben Jacobs’ lighting design is sensual and considerate. Lighting the seaside wooden cage around the stage with LEDs is a master touch. Arden has measured and weighed every line and motion of Caterpillar, and when it is at its best, it’s hard to look away. Caterpillar is at once searingly modern and strikingly timeless, a necessary drama for now.
