THE YOU PLAY (Written on the Waves/Forty-Five North)****

  

By Aashiq 

 

Link: https://soundcloud.com/user-538797665/the-you-play 

 

Text version: https://www.forty-fivenorth.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/The_You_Play_small_acts.pdf

Available until: Unknown 

 

Content warning: If you have mental health problems, it’s possible that some of the things they ask you to do might trigger you. I wasn’t too happy about being told something was my fault and when I was asked to think of slicing something with a knife, I thought about self-harming. I didn’t do it, but you might want to be a bit careful.

 

The You Play is a play all about me. You have to listen and do as you’re told (two things I’ve never been very good at) and it tells you what you’re feeling and what’s happened to you and what’s happening to you right now. It’s actually really freaky. A lot of the things weren’t true for me, but I got so into it, I believed them! 

 

I’ll have fun explaining this to my husband. “Why are you sad, Aashiq?” “Because you cheated on me and left.” Obviously, he didn’t really, but he did in the play. Actually, shall I wake him up now? I want to see the look on his face. He does get the cutest look on his face when he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. 

 

Here are some of my random thoughts as I listened. 

 

It said to pause it and come back at sixteen minutes past. As it was fourteen minutes past, I thought why not? So I paused it and lost my place in the audio (I was using a different link from the one above. You can actually pause the one I’ve given you – don’t say I never do anything for you) which made me scream (in a restrained, mature sort of way because it was sixteen minutes past midnight, there are kids next door and their mum scares the you-know-what out of me. Maybe she’s jealous because my husband is fitter than hers, but I think she prefers straight men). 

 

I’ve got to get a glass of water now? Okay, but only because you can pause it on this page. I hope there aren’t any more instructions like that, all this jumping up and down isn’t good for me. 

 

You want me to move, not drop the laptop and not knock my water over? I mean, this is kind of brilliant and everything, but are you trying to kill me? Is this a murder mystery? I do like murder mysteries, but can’t I just be the detective? 

 

Low light in the wardrobe? Do normal people have that? I don’t have any lights in my wardrobe. I knew I should have got a walk-in one. 

 

Okay, so I live in an inadequate house with an inadequate wardrobe and I’m obviously an inadequate actor because I sound nothing like a laptop. Can I have some water now? Looking at a glass of water always makes me thirsty. 

 

Now I need to pause it again because I apparently don’t know how to flick water on my face. How did I not learn that? What were my teachers thinking?  

 

Go and get a bag of rice and count every single grain? Are you insane? The shop isn’t going to open till 8. 

 

Ooh, my husband has left me! According to the play, anyway. And he cheated! Lovely! 

 

Okay, I’m sitting on it. It’s not comfortable! 

 

Stop BREATHING??? 

 

I didn’t know relationships involved that. GROSS! 

 

I’ve got tweezers in my hair. How were tweezers even the nearest thing to me that were colourful? Unless I was supposed to stick the mouse in my pants? My mouse is pink and sparkly. All mice should be pink and sparkly. Or maybe not. It took long enough to decide between them when there were just two to choose from. 

 

The You Play is written by Rafaella Marcus (who also wrote Lost & Found: The Gift) and it’s such a creative idea. It’s so clever too. Even though a lot of the things said in the play didn’t actually apply to me, there was something about the words and Dinah Mullen’s sound design that made me feel like it was real, it was me and it gave me genuine emotions in response to that. A good writer can make you believe things that aren’t true, but a writer who can make you believe things about you which aren’t true really has done something clever. (Maybe Rafaella could write a letter to my husband and tell him he really wants me to have a walk-in wardrobe. With low lights, of course.) 

 

The You is supposed to have a loose connection to The Winter’s Tale, but I didn’t really pick up on that. There’s jealousy and there’s a person who leaves, but I didn’t notice any bears or statues and the big emotional connection didn’t really seem to correspond to anything in the play. So it was too subtle for me (and I’ve read and seen The Winter’s Tale loads of times), but I didn’t really feel like I was missing anything (except my husband and maybe my sanity). 

 

Jessica Lazar is the director and she’s gone for a totally natural approach with this. No dramatic voice telling you to switch the light off. It’s all quite casual, if you discount what’s actually being said. It sounds so normal, you forget it isn’t till you’re suddenly in the middle of it and like… WHAT AM I DOING??? 

 

Katherine Parkinson plays the role of the main voice and she does it so well. It’s like listening to a friend or your inner voice, which sounds so nice until suddenly they’ve insulted you and it’s like what? Did you seriously just say that? Inner voices can be so disloyal. It’s a really brilliant piece of acting because you find out so little about the speaker and they’re only really part of the action as a narrator so there’s not much for an actor to catch hold of, but Katherine gives the character a really strong presence. 

 

The You is a brilliant, original and really clever play. (And if it has left me feeling insecure about my marriage, I know just the person to reassure me.)