By Aashiq
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niM7VCUePus
Available until: Unknown
This is another really incredible play
from a young writer. It’s hard to know what to say about it. It feels like writer
Kieran Anderson has taken away my ability to speak and nobody does that. Plenty
of people wish they could, but not many people manage it.
It opens with beeping. It sounds like a hospital; a heartbeat monitor. Someone is trying to say something, but the words aren’t coming out clearly, as though the hearer is in a fog and can’t take in the words.
Throughout the play, more details are
revealed. It’s a really sad, heart-wrenching story and I seriously want to wake
my husband up for a cuddle, but… some people don’t get a cuddle. Not properly.
The subject matter is one many adults
would struggle to write about, but Kieran’s writing is mature and hard-hitting.
He doesn’t use many words – a lot of the play is silent. The words he does use
tell you a little bit more about the story, but he writes no more than he needs
to. The silences are frightening and powerful.
Kieran also knows how to use images.
There are repetitive movements; images of people apparently fighting with
themselves; ways of using the camera to create a particular effect. It’s
impossible to say how much of this is in the script and how much comes from
director Grace Gibson, but however they’ve done it, they’ve created something
wonderful. It’s unsettling and upsetting and it’s unbelievably good.
There are some great performances from
Jessica Hardwick, Ekow Quartey, Jessica Clark, Lois Chimimba and particularly
Amar Duffus in the central role of Spero, but the writer is the star here.
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