Post by Steve on Aug 23, 2024 13:21:14 GMT
This was really good: a rare play about rape that doesn't focus only on a court case.
The cast are terrific, with Amanda Abbington and Rosie Day especially good in the main parts.
Some spoilers follow. . .
For me, this was like Tennessee Williams's "The Glass Menagerie," a memory play recounting sad events from the past.
But where Williams's play is narrated from the perspective of an ambitious son leaving his preoccupied mother and fragile sister behind, this play is narrated by the preoccupied mother, who watches her ambitious son leave her behind to take care of her fragile daughter.
The shock of the play is that the daughter isn't intrinsically fragile, but has been made fragile by being raped.
Amanda Abbington carries the biggest burden, as the wistful but hardboiled mother who remembers the smell of gingerbread in her house the day her daughter was raped, and who is informed that the trauma of rape has resulted in the "suicide" of even rape victims who appear to be coping.
This latter comment, made by Tok Stephens in one of his many supporting roles, haunts the play from the moment it is made until the very end, like a ticking clock. . .
The play jumps backwards and forwards in time. We discover that as little children, the brilliant son was obsessed with numbers, and the daughter was trending towards chefdom even when she precociously suggested that a restaurant's creamed spinach "needs nutmeg," amusingly re-enacted by Rosie Day in a whiny little girl voice.
Such revelations are funny, and make us care about what will happen to the daughter and to the family. . .
What got to me was the degree to which the court case was the least of the story. Rape eats up whole lives.
And because it's based on a true story, the narration is full of observations that hit hard and hit poignantly, such as, for example, the automatic administration of anti-AIDS drugs to the rape victims of unknown assailants, which has the girl panicking: "Do I have AIDS?"
Rosie Day, who was great in a couple of Trafalgar 2 productions, as well as in a Hampstead show, is here the enigmatic "what if?," now a little girl, now in panic, now numb, ever a ticking clock, the elusive focus of the story that explodes the world of a whole family.
I loved this to the tune of 4 stars, only not going higher because I wished we had more full scenes with Rosie Day's character (like the scene with the glass menagerie in the Williams play), rather than relying quite so much on Amanda Abbington's superlative recounting of one mother's unbearable trauma.
The cast are terrific, with Amanda Abbington and Rosie Day especially good in the main parts.
Some spoilers follow. . .
For me, this was like Tennessee Williams's "The Glass Menagerie," a memory play recounting sad events from the past.
But where Williams's play is narrated from the perspective of an ambitious son leaving his preoccupied mother and fragile sister behind, this play is narrated by the preoccupied mother, who watches her ambitious son leave her behind to take care of her fragile daughter.
The shock of the play is that the daughter isn't intrinsically fragile, but has been made fragile by being raped.
Amanda Abbington carries the biggest burden, as the wistful but hardboiled mother who remembers the smell of gingerbread in her house the day her daughter was raped, and who is informed that the trauma of rape has resulted in the "suicide" of even rape victims who appear to be coping.
This latter comment, made by Tok Stephens in one of his many supporting roles, haunts the play from the moment it is made until the very end, like a ticking clock. . .
The play jumps backwards and forwards in time. We discover that as little children, the brilliant son was obsessed with numbers, and the daughter was trending towards chefdom even when she precociously suggested that a restaurant's creamed spinach "needs nutmeg," amusingly re-enacted by Rosie Day in a whiny little girl voice.
Such revelations are funny, and make us care about what will happen to the daughter and to the family. . .
What got to me was the degree to which the court case was the least of the story. Rape eats up whole lives.
And because it's based on a true story, the narration is full of observations that hit hard and hit poignantly, such as, for example, the automatic administration of anti-AIDS drugs to the rape victims of unknown assailants, which has the girl panicking: "Do I have AIDS?"
Rosie Day, who was great in a couple of Trafalgar 2 productions, as well as in a Hampstead show, is here the enigmatic "what if?," now a little girl, now in panic, now numb, ever a ticking clock, the elusive focus of the story that explodes the world of a whole family.
I loved this to the tune of 4 stars, only not going higher because I wished we had more full scenes with Rosie Day's character (like the scene with the glass menagerie in the Williams play), rather than relying quite so much on Amanda Abbington's superlative recounting of one mother's unbearable trauma.