Theatre review

I was going to write this the morn­ing after the show so that people would have a chance to see the remain­ing three nights, but in the end, the artist asked for approval and well… I got lazy.

hermia8

per­formed a solo show as part of her VCA anim­ateur­ing course in Studio 45 at the VCA. The audi­ence was shep­her­ded in and took cramped seats in a mostly darkened space. On a ledge above the stage, Anna leaned against a rail­ing. She wore a black coat and she was still and sad-seem­ing. The lights dimmed, music star­ted, lights came back up again and Anna spoke: I plan to run away with you.

The show was an intense emo­tional jour­ney of a woman’s inter­ac­tion with her world. Vign­ettes of her life were nar­rated in the third person as voice-over. Each of these vign­ettes seemed to be an example of a rash­ness of action that only later res­ul­ted in embar­rass­ment or regret. There was a con­stant sense that the woman could­n’t trust her­self, that her actions always had unin­ten­ded consequences.

At the end, she climbed back up to her ledge and declared that she would­n’t run away with “you” after all, because “you are too expens­ive”. That line didn’t make a lot of sense within my other inter­pret­a­tions of the theme, but then, I still haven’t worked out who “you” is.

The most amaz­ing piece of craft was a moment when she stood toward the front of the stage, and I could almost feel the heat of the day, the sun on her face, the love and joy in her life as she smiled and touched a hand to her cheek. Then, without warn­ing, everything changed. Terror. Shock. She steps back, away from the edge, into the dark. Fear. Noth­ing is safe, it can’t be trusted.

The most con­front­ing was watch­ing what I inter­pret to be the (intern­ally gen­er­ated and unex­plained) elec­tric shocks that I know Anna went through during a period a little while ago. I have no idea what someone else watch­ing would make of it, but I felt it to be intensely per­sonal, uncom­fort­able to watch, the final betrayal of her own body.

I’m not sure the space was ideal. As the seats were all on a level with the stage, most people didn’t see any of the action when the actor was seated on the floor. Many of us stood at that point, cran­ing over the heads of those in front of us.

As a whole, the piece worked but felt a little dis­join­ted at times. It was def­in­itely power­ful and I cer­tainly look for­ward to more of this artist’s work! (Not just because she’s my friend and I think she rocks!)