Eastgate Theatre, Peebles
Three stars
In a white hospital ward,
a woman wakes up to the world she used to know, but which isn’t quite the same
as what feels like moments ago. In actuality in Harold Pinter’s late period
miniature, Gina went to sleep as a teenage girl twenty-nine years ago, and has
come to as a middle-aged woman, but with all her girlish dreams of old gushing
out now in a torrent of brain/speech activity.
Watched over by doting
doctor Hornby, husband of Deborah’s sister Pauline, the latter of whom he might
well have met while caring for her sibling, Deborah is initially overwhelmed by
a rush of memories. Among the litanies of boyfriends and fall-outs, long-buried
intimations of something far darker surface briefly before she flashes forward
to the next thing. When exactly those things happened, if at all, is up for
debate.
Inspired by Oliver
Sacks’ book, Awakenings, which looks at the effects of encephalitis lethargica,
or sleepy sickness, which leaves sufferers in a long-term comatose state,
Pinter’s 1982 play is uncharacteristically specific in situation and locale.
Out of this, however, he delves deep into the psyche of being a stranger in a
strange world.
Michael Emans’ revival
for Rapture Theatre’s Rapture Bites season of touring lunchtime theatre is
pitched high from the off. Where one might expect quietude, some moments feel
unnecessarily declaimed. Despite this, the play’s cast of three led by Gina
Isaac as Deborah, capture the sense of mutual bewilderment that has shocked
them all into life.
Burt Ceasar makes a
brooding Hornby and Janet Coulson a resigned Pauline. Both characters have had
their lives, and seem shell-shocked into silence by having them turned upside
down like this. As Deborah, Isaac has her move between hysteria and eventual
acceptance as she comes to terms with her past and squares up to her present. In
terms of the future, however, chances are she’ll never quite manage to come in
from the cold.
The Herald, March 27th 2019
ends
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