As C S Lewis once wrote, “grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape”. Stacey Cullen’s debut Fringe play is about Jamie, a young sommelier, lost in her own prison of wine, bread, loss and guilt, unable yet even to move around that next bend.
Slowly, over the course of the play, we learn about Jamie’s partner, who he was, how he made her smile, how they fought and the night he died. Now soaked in wine and rattling with Prozac pills, she’s running on the spot, unable to move past her grief, and even to move his old jacket from the closet.
It’s a soulful piece, at times beautifully poetic, as Jamie links the facets of her life and her pain to the scents in the air around her, recounting her pain step by step in breath and taste. Much like true grief, there aren’t easy answers, and the piece itself feels like a process more than a solution.
It’s unfortunate then that Cullen’s performance doesn’t quite bear up to the high bar of her writing. While the character and portrayal of Jamie is believable, there’s a distance to the performance and a flatness to the delivery that feels rehearsed and practised. This gives the story the feel of a memorised speech rather than an honest and real account from the heart as the dialogue plays through her.
The one moment where Cullen shifts gears is during the play’s tonally confused opening with a manic pop-song dancing and dressing routine that feels oddly out of place with the rest of the story that follows and the person who is then presented to the audience. If this is supposed to signify some change, or the manic mood shifts, then that isn’t apparent in the text or the tone.
It’s still, however, a sombre and reflective play, and one that will last in the memory, like the fresh scent of petrichor as the rain falls on the dust. If this is the first play Cullen brings to the stage, then we anticipate her next with great interest.