Bedlam Theatre, Edinburgh
4 stars
You can see why Ella Hickson’s self-directed compendium of eight monologues scooped the Carol Tambor Award and a three-week run in New York following its Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut. Because this is one of the most self-assured, startlingly well-written and moving pieces of theatre around, and by rights the producing houses should be over Hickson like a rash. Imagine the spirit of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads trickled down a couple of generations of 21st century lives in motion, and you’re getting close to where Hickson’s head is at.
From the jolly-hockey-sticks hooker who tends to casualties of the (last) recession, to the art world suicide that ends the night, a black-humoured litany of disconnection and dysfunction is laid bare. Tales of love, hate, sex, death, faith, guilt and betrayal are littered with affirmations of denial, disappointment, self-loathing, self-negation, loneliness, yearning and all the private inner demons that normally stay bottled-up.
Yet this is no unfocussed howl of adolescent rage. Whether through the forensic dissection of a body-building squaddie turned mortuary attendant, a teenage boy’s rites of passage in France, a single mother’s re-awakening to the magic of Christmas or a woman’s descent into hedonism to remind herself she’s alive, this is controlled, carefully crafted stuff. If there’s a common thread, it’s the variety of totems each character clings onto to get them through the night, be it a damaged young woman’s religious self-delusion or, most devastating of all, a U.S. 7/7 survivor’s flight from the American dream he so spectacularly defined. Staged simply, while in essence a student production, there is some seriously good acting at play in a work that must be seen again post New York.
The Herald, December 10th 2008
ends
4 stars
You can see why Ella Hickson’s self-directed compendium of eight monologues scooped the Carol Tambor Award and a three-week run in New York following its Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut. Because this is one of the most self-assured, startlingly well-written and moving pieces of theatre around, and by rights the producing houses should be over Hickson like a rash. Imagine the spirit of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads trickled down a couple of generations of 21st century lives in motion, and you’re getting close to where Hickson’s head is at.
From the jolly-hockey-sticks hooker who tends to casualties of the (last) recession, to the art world suicide that ends the night, a black-humoured litany of disconnection and dysfunction is laid bare. Tales of love, hate, sex, death, faith, guilt and betrayal are littered with affirmations of denial, disappointment, self-loathing, self-negation, loneliness, yearning and all the private inner demons that normally stay bottled-up.
Yet this is no unfocussed howl of adolescent rage. Whether through the forensic dissection of a body-building squaddie turned mortuary attendant, a teenage boy’s rites of passage in France, a single mother’s re-awakening to the magic of Christmas or a woman’s descent into hedonism to remind herself she’s alive, this is controlled, carefully crafted stuff. If there’s a common thread, it’s the variety of totems each character clings onto to get them through the night, be it a damaged young woman’s religious self-delusion or, most devastating of all, a U.S. 7/7 survivor’s flight from the American dream he so spectacularly defined. Staged simply, while in essence a student production, there is some seriously good acting at play in a work that must be seen again post New York.
The Herald, December 10th 2008
ends
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