ROSEWATER (Tramp)*****

 

By Aashiq

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UnHq07HDm4

Available until: Unknown

I love seeing the one-word titles of Philip Ridley’s The Beast Will Rise series and trying to guess what it might be about. It could be about anything. There’s a flavoured water called rosewater. It can be used in recipes or on your skin or hair or it can be used for a perfume or aromatherapy. Google says you can also buy it in Waterstones, but I think google is lying. It’s always lying. Unless there’s a book called Rosewater, I suppose.

But even if I’m right (I am right occasionally and I haven’t been right for a while so it’s about time), it could be that the rosewater is central to the play, as in Gators, or just the starting point like Cactus. Or it could remain important throughout without being the main point, like Puzzle. It could even not appear at all, like… no, I’m not telling you that. Go and watch them if you want to know. Actually, go and watch them anyway.

Rosewater is one of my favourites. There’s a great character, brilliantly brought to life by Yanexi Enrique. Wiebke Green keeps her sitting still the whole time, but there’s a great sense of movement in Yanexi’s performance. She spends a lot of the monologue talking about walking between one place and another (no, I’m not telling you any more than that) and it’s quite a dramatic walk, but you get that just from Yanexi’s voice and urgency. It’s so easy to see the objects and the people she describes, as though they really are right in front of you.

Philip Ridley hints at the start that there’s a secret. Sometimes, Yanexi loses the thread of what she’s saying. So few hints are dropped, but it’s intriguing and I was desperate to know. I’m not disappointed, either.

The only thing that disappoints me is that Rosewater is the last of this fascinating, surprising and brilliant series of monologues.

But I can always watch them all again.