Three plays by three playwrights with music, quite a production. While all three feature love, betrayal, passion and obsession, in us and the community, they are all different.
The Start of Space by award-winning Laura Lindow opens the show, which shows Dr Fiona McGill (Imogen Stubbs), a heart surgeon with a life and death job. It begins with her giving a lecture on her profession; this then turns into reflecting on her life. It is essentially about one’s heart and how it works but as Stubbs, an expert in the heart, says, “I still don’t know how it works”; she can control other people’s hearts but not her own. A quite intense 50 minutes.
The second, Fangirl, or the justification of limerence by Naomi Obeng, centres more on the community. Three online fans' fixation with their favourite pop star has a passion and obsession with an almost religious intensity, referring to their idol as a ‘God’. The most fervent of them, Clara (Laila Zaidi), is distraught when she discovers her idol is human. A tale about how social media runs, rules some people’s lives and thoughts; as Zaidi says, “I love the escape of it… the myth-making… excitement ….fantasising... dreaming out of this terrible world… it's safer than real love”.
Limerence means an infatuation with someone sparked by low self-esteem, causing some to use social media as an escape from reality. It is accompanied by a live score Me Lost Me composed and played by Jayne Dent, which is integral to the trio of plays. Dent is on stage for most of the show, providing filmic musical accompaniment and incorporating original songs into the three pieces.
One hour and 35 minutes in and interval. The last shortest piece, With the Love of Neither God nor State by Vici Wreford-Sinnott, centres on a neurodiverse 21-year-old, Greta Stone (Rebecca Glendenning-Laycock). She is determined to escape from the restrictions continual fostering and state intuitions have placed on her. She is fed up with being told how she feels without any consultation; she wishes to be her own person and find love. She goes a local social club that is closing down to become a food bank and finds more than she expected. This piece has a more political element, commenting on society today and also the attitude to any disability.
All three actors feature in all three plays, taking different roles. In The Start of Space, Stubbs talks about the heart and certainly plays it with heart, traversing through myriad emotions effortlessly. She says, “I want silence,” and more silent pauses would have even enriched Stubbs’s performance more, such as the very effective eight seconds near the end. Her part was delivered with a delightful Scottish accent, which to the unfamiliar ear may have been a little difficult to follow on occasions.
Zaidi in Fangirl, or the justification of limerence plays the part with all the intensity and passion her role demands; a pity her excitement sometimes made her delivery very rushed and loud. I have acute hearing but found I had to resort to the captioning for clarity of text; plays are meant to be heard as well as seen. Wreford-Sinnott in With the Love of Neither God nor State delivers a wonderfully natural performance as the young girl lost.
Wreford-Sinnott says, "Greta must be played by a neurodivergent actor with an understanding from direct personal experience." This is a little difficult if one is playing a murderer, pedophile or even mother, wife etc. if the actor has no personal experience of the role. Any worthwhile actor does not only learn the lines but researches the part and makes every effort to understand how their character ticks. This purely personal opinion and does not make it right or wrong, only my opinion.
One of the main stars of this production is the setting (Amy Watts): a bare stage with strategically placed blocks on different levels, excellently lit (Drummond Orr) from beneath. The two directors, Jack McNamara and Bex Bowsher, use them to great effect, keeping the action flowing.
As a world première, I am sure we will see more of these plays, so different, so watch this space.