RACHEL (Compacts)*****

 

By Emma

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d08c-eKC35A

Available until: Unknown

Warning: themes of abuse and violence

I don’t think I really know how to say how good this is. It’s really powerful. It’s only eleven minutes long but it has the emotional effect of a much longer play. It’s by Rick Allden and he never wastes a word, every single word he’s written is all part of the story he’s telling. Everything is relevant to the story but in a way that lets you get to know the character.

I think Rick writes really well from a female point of view too. In real life, the lines are a bit blurred between how different genders speak. I think there’s less pressure now for men and women to talk a certain way. But fiction is always more complicated than truth and especially with something very short like this, I think we can be quite fussy about how male, female and non-binary characters ‘should’ talk, even if we don’t want to think about things in that way. But the words and the way the sentences are put together sound really convincingly female. I really like the way the character is constructed too, the way you slowly build up a picture of who she is.

The way the full truth is slowly revealed is also amazing. I kept thinking I knew where the story was going and sometimes I was kind of right but it was never quite how I was expecting. It’s obviously a tense situation right from the start but the tension goes up and up, right up until the brilliant ending.

It’s a monologue like all the other Compacts plays and this one is performed by Bethan Leyshon. She’s really good. We don’t see or hear the person she’s talking about, but the fear Bethan projects makes us feel like we can see and hear everything she can. It’s really scary. It’s also really sad because even when she’s terrified, she’s really taking care to explain everything really clearly and that makes her seem so lovely. In a way that doesn’t matter because nobody deserves to be in this situation, not even someone like Donald Trump (if he could just lose the election that’s enough for me) but we often can’t help hurting for someone more when it’s a person we like. I think a lot of writers would find it really difficult to write a really short play about someone who’s scared and make it seem realistic that she’s showing her likeability at a time like this. But Rick Allden just makes everything work.

Director Eleri B. Jones has got Bethan sitting in the bath and I think this is really clever. She’s in a small space so that kind of emphasises how trapped she is. The fact it’s quite an unusual place to sit leaves open the possibility that maybe things aren’t really quite as they seem. And it also some people who hurt themselves do it in the bath so I was thinking about that too which made it even scarier.

It’s just really good in all sorts of ways and really clever.