Mental illness is not a laughing matter. However, Barbara Diesel’s Dear Eliza demonstrates the subject can make for an engrossing, at times harrowing, drama.
Diesel’s script is beautifully constructed, sometimes skimming past a vital plot point only to return and examine it in detail. In this way, we learn Eliza (author and sole performer Barbara Diesel) was abandoned by her mother at an early age, raised by her socially inadequate father (whom she compares to a damp washing-up rag) and has experienced mental health issues since childhood. Most significant is the revelation that, despite her mental fragility, she is the intended recipient, rather than the author, of a series of letters which amount to a cry for help.
Director Helen Parry and performer Diesel set a disconcerting atmosphere demonstrating, rather than coldly describing, the trauma of mental illness. Before the play opens, Diesel is on stage restlessly pacing around. It creates an anxious mood; even if you do not meet her eyes, it is hard to ignore the tension in her body as her limbs twitch, raising the uncomfortable possibility of aggressive action.
The opening is suitably obscure. It is apparent Eliza is under observation—a camera records her actions—but the reason is unclear. There is a gauche sweetness to Diesel’s initial reading of the letters she has discovered, pitching her voice too loud as if making a presentation at school assembly.
Diesel’s body language throughout is that of someone whose passion pushes her towards hyperactivity. She is rarely still, moving from casual hand-in-pockets chatting, to pacing the stage like a caged tiger or perching awkwardly upon a chair—the sole prop on the bare stage. Eliza uses outward bluster, even aggression to conceal the depth of her injury. Even her speeches serve as passive-aggressive shields, the punchline to a knock-knock joke "Who’s there?" "Not my mother that’s for sure" is referred to as "trauma humour".
Yet, although you might occasionally want to throw a net over Eliza and compel her to sit still, she remains a likable person. Her obvious distress coming from the loss of a friend rather than a trivial reason.
Factual information is skilfully filtered through the script without hindering the fast pace of the narrative. Eliza explains HM Government’s Commitment Action Plan for mental health has limited resources, so there is the temptation to exaggerate symptoms to attract attention.
The centre of the play is a bitter irony: although Eliza has endured a lifelong struggle with mental illness, it is her friend who succumbs and takes her own life. In a beautifully bleak summation, Eliza observes mentally ill people may have to accept full recovery is not possible—they may have to endure, or at best reduce the impact of, the condition. Being mentally ill, she points out, makes you the subject of finger-pointing and gossip, while suicide offers the dignity of being a tragic figure.
Raw yet playful and utterly compelling, Dear Eliza is fringe theatre at its best.